The Norfolk post. [volume] (Norfolk, Va.) 1865-1866, 1865-09-04
SOUTHERN LITERATURE.

We have beforeus pile of Confederate
literature, in the form of publications,
issued from the presses of Mobile, Rich
mond and other points in the confede-
racy during the war, which we have
been kindly supplied with by Mr.. j. Y.
Gilmore, from his book store on Main
street. These are real curiosities of lit
erature, when we take into consideration
the peculiar circumstances under which
they were produced. Some of the works
are reprints of standard English novel
| lists, while others are the original pro-
auctions of Southern genius-inspired
by stupid hatred of the vile Yankee.
They all have dingy, dull appearance
so far as the paper and typographical
execution goes-and most of the binding
is done in wall paper, a fact which seems
the wall" in literature as well as in arms.
The original works are principally
sensational war novels, or compilations
of anecdotes, in which the barbarities
and inhumanities of the Northern van.
dals form the burden of the story. The
writers were evidently short of ink
owing to the efficiency of the block
ade, and used NORWOOD mixed with
gall as substitute, for that more gener-
Gus fluid. Song books, also, whose
literary and lyrical merits consist in
the fact that they contain Yankee songs of
the war, or national airs, changed to suit
the Southern side of the question.
Southern grammars, too, which ac-
counts for the singular modes of express
sion we hear occasionally in the late
confederacy We yield the point now
the old grammarians were discarded
and the South must have anew etymol-
ogy and syntax, as we'll as a new gov
eminent, new geography, and new
history. Arithmetic likewise must be
changed, and the method of teaching
the alphabet must be strictly southern
for we see that these primary books in
mathematics and photography, are out
and out confederate. But even with the
aid of the confederate arithmetic they
were unable to reduce their money to a
specie basis, multiply their resources or
add to their armies--although they
always managed with its assistance to
compute the Federal forces as five to one,
and the number of killed in every battle
as ten Yankees to one rebel. This
Southern arithmetic was wonderful
auxiliary to their game of brag-a faith
full ally. The novels written during the
war, are about as highly colored as were
the editorials of Pollard, John Mitchell
.Durant Da Ponte and La Fontaine,
the repentant sinner-whO represented
those four great nationalities of the
world, Virginia, ireland, New York and
Canada. on the magnanimous Richmond
press. Miss Evans, of Mobile, all au-
thoress ofsome fame before the war, was
weak enough, we perceive, to lend her
elegant pen to this vile work of SANDER
ing and misrepresenting the generous
and noble men of the North. In novel
entitled Macaria, she excoriates the Yam
KEGS without mercy, and manifests her
bitterness of feeling and the blindness of
her prejudices, by denouncing the en-
tire nation as cruel, barbarous and cow
ardly. This work was published in Mo-
bile. with very grandiloquent, dedica-
tory epistle, which we see she has entire
" discarded in the recent republication
of the book at the North, besides soften
ing down some of the passages most dis
tasteful to Yankee sensibilities. Did
we say sensibilities? We were wrong,
According to these people, Yankees car
not be possessed of any thing like ten
derness of feeling. You cannot insult
them; they are too base, degraded and
cowardly. They are, to use Davis
words. like whipped spaniels.' "Our
brave boys always beat them five to one
and chased them from every battlefield
with bowie-knives and bayonets."
"Their hearts always failed them at the
SIGHT of cold steel" There are those
who have never been in the South and
heard the braggadocio of the Southernla-
dies and their "home-guard protectors,
who deserted them wherever the Yam
KEGS appeared, that will not credit the
assertion that such is the style of the
confederate Literature and confederate
conversation; but we assure them that il