Part 1

PUBLICATIONS

OF

THE Mississippi Historical Society

Edited by FRANKLIN L. RILEY Secretary

Reprinted 1919 BY DUNBAR ROWLAND, LL. D. Secretary

VOL. II.

OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI: PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY. 1899.

OFFICERS FOR 1899

PRESIDENT:

GENERAL STEPHEN D. LEE, Columbus, Mississippi.

VICE-PRESIDENTS:

PROFESSOR R. W. JONES, University of Mississippi. JUDGE B. T. KIMBROUGH, Oxford, Mississippi.

ARCHIVIST:

CHANCELLOR R. B. FULTON, University of Mississippi.

SECRETARY AND TREASURER:

PROFESSOR FRANKLIN L. RILEY, University of Mississippi.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:

(IN ADDITION TO THE ABOVE OFFICIALS)

PROFESSOR J. M. WHITE, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi. PROFESSOR CHARLES HILLMAN BROUGH, of Mississippi College. PROFESSOR W. L. WEBER, of Millsaps College. PRESIDENT J. R. PRESTON, of Stanton College.

* * * * *

All persons who are interested in the work of the Society and desire to promote its objects are invited to become members.

There is no initiation fee. The only cost to members is, annual dues, $2.00, or life dues, $30.00. Members receive all publications of the Society free of charge.

Donations of relics, manuscripts, books and papers are solicited for the Museum and Archives of the Society.

Address all communications to the Secretary of the Mississippi State Historical Society, University P. O., Mississippi.

CONTENTS

PAGE

TITLE, 1

OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY FOR 1899, 3

CONTENTS, 5

THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN RECENT SOUTHERN LITERATURE, by _Prof. C. Alphonso Smith_, 7

IRWIN RUSSELL--FIRSTFRUITS OF THE SOUTHERN ROMANTIC MOVEMENT, by _Prof. W. L. Weber_, 15

WILLIAM WARD, A MISSISSIPPI POET ENTITLED TO DISTINCTION, by _Prof. Dabney Lipscomb_, 32

SHERWOOD BONNER, HER LIFE AND PLACE IN THE LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH, by _Prof. Alexander L. Bondurant_, 43

'THE DAUGHTER OF THE CONFEDERACY,' HER LIFE, CHARACTER AND WRITINGS, by _Prof. Chiles Clifton Ferrell_, 67

SIR WILLIAM DUNBAR, PIONEER SCIENTIST OF MISSISSIPPI, by _Prof. Franklin L. Riley_, 85

HISTORY OF TAXATION IN MISSISSIPPI, by _Prof. Charles Hillman Brough_, 113

TERRITORIAL GROWTH OF MISSISSIPPI, by _Prof. J. M. White_, 125

THE EARLY SLAVE LAWS OF MISSISSIPPI, by _Alfred H. Stone, Esq._, 135

FEDERAL COURTS, JUDGES, ATTORNEYS AND MARSHALS IN MISSISSIPPI, by _Thomas McAdory Owen, Esq._, 147

RUNNING MISSISSIPPI'S SOUTH LINE, by _Peter J. Hamilton, Esq._, 157

ELIZABETH FEMALE ACADEMY--THE MOTHER OF FEMALE COLLEGES, by _Bishop Chas. B. Galloway_, 169

EARLY HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COLLEGE, by _Mr. J. K. Morrison_, 179

THE RISE AND FALL OF NEGRO RULE IN MISSISSIPPI, by _Dunbar Rowland, Esq._, 189

GLIMPSES OF THE PAST, by _Mrs. Helen D. Bell_, 201

THE HISTORICAL OPPORTUNITY OF MISSISSIPPI, by _Prof. R. W. Jones_, 219

NANIH WAIYA, THE SACRED MOUND OF THE CHOCTAWS, by _Mr. H. S. Halbert_, 223

INDEX, 235

THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN RECENT SOUTHERN LITERATURE.

BY C. ALPHONSO SMITH, A. M., PH. D.

The year 1870 marks an epoch in the history of the South. It witnessed not only the death of Robert E. Lee but the passing also of John Pendleton Kennedy, George Denison Prentice, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, and William Gilmore Simms. In literature it was not only the end of the old but the beginning of the new, for in 1870 the new movement in Southern literature may be said to have been inaugurated in the work of Irwin Russell. I have attempted elsewhere to trace briefly the chronological outlines of this literature from 1870 to the present time. In this paper, therefore, I shall discuss not the history of this literature but rather the history in this literature.

When we compare Southern literature of ante-bellum days with that produced since 1870 we note at once certain obvious differences of style and structure. In the older literature the sentences are longer, the paragraphs less coherent, adjectives more abundant, descriptions more elaborate, plots more intricate and fanciful. In the newer literature the pen is held more firmly; there are fewer episodes; incidents are chosen to illustrate character rather than to enhance the plot; the language is more temperate; the pathos and humor more subtle; some fixed goal is kept in view and the action of the story converges steadily toward this end.

But apart from these stylistic and structural differences there are differences that appeal to the student of history equally as much as to the student of pure literature. Since 1870 Southern writers have begun to find their topics and their inspiration in the life that is round about them. They are resorting not so much to books as to memory, observation and experience. They are not rising into solitary and selfish renown; they are lifting the South with them. They are writing Southern history because they are describing Southern life. The writings of Irwin Russell, Sidney Lanier, Joel Chandler Harris, Miss Murfree, George W. Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, James Lane Allen, Miss Grace King, Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart, and John Fox, Jr., are spreading a knowledge of Southern life and Southern conditions where such knowledge has never penetrated before. And though we call this literature Southern, it is neither sectional in its appeal nor provincial in its workmanship. This, then, is what I mean by the historical element in recent Southern literature.

It has long seemed to me that much of the immediate influence of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ both in this country and in England was due to the fact that the South could not show in all of its ante-bellum literature a single novel treating the same themes treated by Mrs. Stowe, but treating them from a different point of view. It was the first attempt to portray in vivid colors the social and institutional conditions of the South. None of our writers had utilized the material that lay ready to their hands. There was no story written in the spirit of _Marse Chan_ or _Uncle Remus_ which the South could hold up and say,

"Look here, upon this picture, and on this."

The reception accorded Mrs. Stowe's book in the South teaches a valuable lesson, and a lesson which Southern writers have for thirty years profited by _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was met by bitter criticism, by argument, by denunciation, by denial, or by contemptuous silence. But the appeal made by a literary masterpiece, however deficient or faulty in its premises, is not thus to be negatived. The true answer to _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and the most adequate answer that could be given is to be found in the historical note that characterizes the work of Irwin Russell and those who have succeeded him.

I wish to state, therefore, in somewhat broader terms than I have yet seen it stated, what seems to me the historical importance of Irwin Russell in American literature. His priority in the fictional use of the negro dialect has been frequently emphasized, but I wish to emphasize his priority in utilizing for literary purposes the social and institutional conditions in which he himself had lived. Skill in the use of a dialect is a purely literary excellence, but when a writer portrays and thus perpetuates the peculiar life of a people numbering four million, he is to that extent an historian; and Irwin Russell's example in this respect meant a complete change of front in Southern literature. He did not go to Italy for his inspiration as Richard Henry Wilde had done. You find no _Rodolph_, or _Hymns to the Gods_, or _Voyage to the Moon_ among his writings; but you will find that deeper poetic vision that saw pathos and humor and beauty in the humble life that others had contemned.

The appearance of _Christmas-Night in the Quarters_ meant that Southern literature was now to become a true reproduction of Southern conditions. Our writers were henceforth to busy themselves with the interpretation of life at close range. They were to produce a kaleidoscopic body of fiction, each bit of which, sparkling with its own characteristic and independent color, should yet contribute its part to the harmony and symmetry of the whole.

I would not for a moment compare the genius of Irwin Russell with that of Chaucer or of Burns; and yet when Chaucer in the latter part of his life turned from French and Italian sources to find an ampler inspiration in his own England, the England that he knew and loved, he was but illustrating the change that Irwin Russell was to inaugurate in Southern literature; and when Robert Burns broke through the classical trammels of the eighteenth century and lifted the poor Scotch cotter into the circle of the immortals, he was but anticipating your own Mississippian in proving that poetry, like charity, begins at home. To the student of literature, there is a wide difference between the _Prologue to the Canterbury Tales_, _The Cotter's Saturday Night_, and the _Christmas-Night in the Quarters_; but to the student of history the poems stand upon the same plane because each is a transcript of contemporary life.

Irwin Russell represents, therefore, a transition of vital significance in our literature, a transition that had been partly foretold in the work of Judge Longstreet and Col. Richard Malcolm Johnston. There is as much local coloring in the _Georgia Scenes_ and the _Dukesborough Tales_ as in the work of Irwin Russell; but I do not find the same deft workmanship; I miss in the older works the sympathy, the pathos, and the self-restraint that enable Irwin Russel to be local in his themes without being provincial in his manner.

I do not say that the poet or the novelist must never revert to past history or to historical documents for his topics. His own genius and taste must be his surest guide to both as to topic and to treatment; but I do say that a nation is unfortunate if the builders of its literature invariably draw their material from foreign sources or from the history that was enacted before they were born.

"I have no churlish objection," says Emerson in his _Essay on Self-Reliance_, "to the circumnavigation of the globe for the purposes of art, of study and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows____ The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, ... he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also."

The historical element, therefore, of which I am speaking is not synonymous with the historical novel. The critics apply the term historical novel to those novels that attempt to reproduce the past. These novels are retrospective and essentially romantic. In the work of Sir Walter Scott this form of literature attained its florescence. But I contend that while the historical novel may have a genuinely human interest, its value as history is almost inappreciable as compared with the historical value of the literature that portrays contemporary life. We do not study ancient history in Chaucer's _Legend of Good Women_, but there would be a deplorable gap in our knowledge of fourteenth century England if _The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales_ had never been written.

A hundred years from now Dickens' _Tale of Two Cities_ will not have the historical significance that _David Copperfield_ will have; because the _Tale of Two Cities_ is based on records that are accessible to all students of the French Revolution. It is not an interpretation of life at first hand; it is an interpretation only of books. Then, too, historical investigation is even today far more accurate and scientific than when Dickens wrote. But _David Copperfield_, which the critics have never called an historical novel, has an historical element that time cannot take away, for it is the record of what an accurate observer saw and felt and heard in the first half of the nineteenth century. The historical novel, therefore, in the current acceptation of the term, contributes nothing to the sources of historical study, though it does popularize history and thus help to prepare an audience for the scientific historian.

Now, the South has produced her full share of historical novels. From _Horse-Shoe Robinson_ in 1835 to _The Prisoners of Hope_ in 1898, Southern writers have shown themselves by no means insensible to the literary possibilities latent in our colonial and revolutionary history. But it was not until 1870 that the South may be said to have had a school of writers who, while not neglecting the historical novel proper, began to find the scenery and materials of their stories chiefly in local conditions and in passing or remembered events. Much, it is true, has been lost to our literature, but much has been saved.

It has often been said that the new movement in Southern literature was due to the influence of Bret Harte's works, but such a statement hardly deserves refutation. The cause lies deeper than this. The events of 1861-65 not only broke the continuity of Southern history but changed forever the social and political status of the Southern states. The past began to loom up strange and remote, but "dear as remembered kisses after death." Men seemed to have lived a quarter of a century in four years. They moved as in a world not realized. Now it is just at such periods that literature finds its opportunity, for at such periods a people's historic consciousness is either deepened or destroyed, and this national consciousness finds expression in historical literature.

The South, then, is slowly writing her history in her literature. Hardly a year passes that some new state or some new period does not find a place in the onward movement. Only in the last year, hundreds of readers who care nothing for formal histories have pored over Mr. Page's _Red Rock_ and learned for the first time the inside history of Reconstruction; in the pages of Miss Murfree's _Story of Old Fort Loudon_, they have seen the heroism with which the Tennessee soldier won his state from the wilderness and the Indian; in Miss Grace King's _De Soto and his Men in the Land of Florida_, they have followed the discoverer of the Mississippi on a journey as marvelous and romantic as the fabled voyage of Jason; in _The Kentuckians_ of John Fox, Jr., they have read again of that undying feud between highlander and lowlander that has found expression in more than a hundred English and Scotch ballads; in _Chalmette_ of Mr. Clinton Ross, they have stood again with Jackson on an immortal battlefield; in _The Wire Cutters_ of Mrs. M. E. M. Davis, they have witnessed a hitherto unexplored region, that of West Texas, added to the growing map of Southern literature; in _The Prisoners of Hope_, by Miss Mary Johnston, they have heard the first mutterings of insurrection under the colonial tyranny of Governor Berkeley,--mutterings that a century later were to be reinforced by the pen of Jefferson and the sword of Washington. And these books mark the record of but twelve months.

Need I say that the significance of this historical movement in our literature is vital and profound for every man and woman before me? or that it merits the earnest consideration of every historical society organized to preserve and perpetuate the facts of our history.

Let me remind you that the literary significance of the Civil War is as noteworthy as its purely historical significance. That struggle meant far more to the South than to the North. To the North it meant the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery. To the South it meant decimated families, smoking homesteads, and the passing forever of a civilization unique in human history. But LITERATURE LOVES A LOST CAUSE, PROVIDED HONOR BE NOT LOST. Hector, the leader of the vanquished Trojans, is the most princely figure that the Greek Homer has portrayed; the Roman Virgil is proud to trace the lineage of his people not back to the victorious Greeks but to the defeated Trojans; the English poet-laureate finds his deepest inspiration not in the victories of his Saxon ancestors over King Arthur but in King Arthur himself, the fated leader of a losing cause. And so it has always been: the brave but unfortunate reap always the richest measure of literary immortality.

In conclusion, I believe that in the organization of the Mississippi State Historical Society and in the beneficent work that it has wrought during its career of nine years, I see another indication of that growing historic consciousness without which we cannot stand unabashed before the bar of future history. "Deeds of prowess and exalted situations cannot of themselves" says Schlegel (_History of Literature_, Lecture I) "command our admiration or determine our judgment. A people that would rank high in our esteem must themselves be conscious of the importance of their own doings and fortunes." The invaluable work that is being done by this Society for the history of Mississippi is a part of that larger movement of which I have spoken. Both testify to the advent of that historical spirit which "cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof." If I read aright the signs of the times, the new century will not have been many years old before the history of the South will be enshrined not only in annals and chronicles but in the living letters of a nation's song and story.

IRWIN RUSSELL--FIRST FRUITS OF THE SOUTHERN ROMANTIC MOVEMENT.

BY W. L. WEBER.

So wide is the connotation of the word Romanticism, we may make up almost any conceivable definition and be sure we have respectable authority in agreement with the view we have taken. The fault to be found with the current definitions is that they stress the source, at the expense, of the character of that influence which transformed "the age of prose and reason" into the "Renascence of Wonder." The influence to be stressed in the use I shall wish to make of the word Romanticism is protest against the settled, conservative, classical order of things. Secondarily, it will be remembered that the source of much of the literary material used by the protestants is to be found in the remote past--remote whether in time or in charge of mental attitude.

In order to be able to throw a clearly defined portrait of Irwin Russell on the canvas of Southern literature, it will be necessary rapidly to review the main outlines of this Romantic movement in the development of English thought a period which may be shown to be the prototype of our own after-the-war literary life.

We shall not go into details. First we should recall to mind the main literary currents of English thinking from the time of Dryden to the end of the dictatorship of the great Cham himself. It will be readily remembered that fashion in literature had changed soon after Shakespeare's death and his native wood-notes wild were forgot for a time. The age of prose and reason followed. Self-consciousness was a characteristic note of the Augustan, the eighteenth century literature. Narrowness of imagination, and faithfulness in copying made up the main classical elements in many an English poet under the regime of Formalism.

"Back to nature!" was the rallying cry of a protest against this formalism--an inarticulate protest which culminated in the Romantic movement. Under the leadership of Dryden and for more than a century after him, canons of literary art based on classical models had almost undisputed sway. Aristotle filtered through Horace and Horace diluted by Boileau were prescribed by doctors who would correct and amend English speech and literature. From these masters were drawn rules so minute and so inflexible as to put to the death budding originality by the demand for "correctness." If the poet were moved to describe pastoral scenes, he must needs go to Theocritus for the names of his characters, to Virgil for the contour of his scenery. But all this classicism was counterfeit. It was "more Latin than Greek, and more French than Latin." The classical poet, as he misnamed himself, followed with slavish persistence the creed which he had adopted. It was an accepted law that "the best of the modern poets in all languages are those that have the nearest copied the ancients." He would have nothing of country life. Rough and irregular scenery were distasteful to him. Mountains he described by Gothic--his pet term of opprobrium. Scenery as well as thought must conform to the level. "Decent conformity," then, characterized the Augustan age and enthusiasm had no place in the age of Dryden and of Pope.

Some of the characteristic features of the Romantic movement may be readily got at, by prefixing a negative to the qualities of the classical school. The country, out door life, rugged mountains, folk-songs, ballads in every form, the picturing of English people in English scenery were used as subject-matter--in other words, the telling what the writer had himself seen and, therefore, what he really knew, instead of what he had read. It was this reaction against formalism which produced such men as Chatterton, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Scott.

It is not within the purpose of this paper to give a full list of the writers who may be said to be the forerunners of this movement which dominated English poetry during the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Nor is it needful to enter into the controversy as to who first gave evidence of the changing attitude. So careful a critic as Theodore Watts assigns the place of priority to Thomas Chatterton, styles him the Father of the Romantic School, and insists that to his influence may be traced some of the best work of Keats and of Coleridge. It will always be well to remember that changes in literary habit do not take place in a year, rarely in a decade. It will, therefore, be easy to point out poets as early as Gray who gave prophecy of the new era. This much at least is noteworthy--putting aside the question as to who comes first of all--that the new current of ideas began very early to flow through poets who were hardly more than boys. Professor Beers has already reminded us that in Joseph Warton as well as in Thomas Chatterton--neither of whom was more than eighteen years of age--we may see the set of the literary current.