The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1866-11-22
Literature for the South.


die sale of their publications in the South
were. very careful what they printed
about slavery. Even the great institu-
tions which issue Sunday School books by
millions, for all denominations, confined
themselves mainly to stories about good
bows who died young and went to heaven.
The American Tract Society pounded
away I'm its publications at other sins than
chat of slavery; and the Methodist de-
nomination divided on this very subject
into the Church North and the Church
South, each with its own "book-conoern," !"
and each publishing what would be ac-
ceptable to it's own section.
But while there was q. general avoid
anee Of treading on the toes of'the South,
q few publishers found it greatly to their
profit, pecuniarily and as a means OF popu-
iarity, TO praise and pet the "peculiar in
stitution.1 Prominent among these pub
lishinls adough-faceso were the Harpers
Of this city. The early volumes of their
magazine, with the ayidity for stale sto-
ries still manifest in the Editors Draw
err of that. publication, gave nearly all
the old plantation traditions and negro
anecdotes and witticisms current since the
davs of the settlement of Jamestown
Then s.Porte9 Crayon," in Virginia Il
lustrated," pictured with pen and pencil,
gay old saunties" who were always cook
inc and eating, patriarchal plantation sun
cIes.o with nothing to do but to sit in the
sun and smoketheir pipes, romping black
children, whose happy smiles shone.
through their slavery, and stalwart
stbucks, . whose main business seemed to
be egro-minstrelsy and jig-dancing Al
together, these pictures were calculated
to persuade philantropists that slavery
was a benefcent institution, which it
would be we'll to extend over the halt
starved, vagrant, ragged and wretched
negroes of the North.
ALI this is wonderfully changed now.
Quite recently gentleman from Ala
bama went to- publishing house in Phila-
iIielphia and asked if they could get to-
gether q sunday y-school library "unexcep-
tionable in sentiment to the South" not
works relating to slavery, the death and
burial Of which the South accepts, but
books which do not abuse Southerners
for their secession. The reply was: "We
have no such books, nor would we pub
lish them if they were offered" !" and an
application TO a denominational publish
IN IN Q society eIicited similar response
The rebellion furnishes cheap and readily
convertible matter for the manufactures
even of Sunday y-school books. The ira
ditional bad boy who went sailing on
Sunday and was drowned, or that other
child Of sin who playedin the fields on
Sunday and was struck by lightning, has
eiven place to the wicked little rebel who
followed his father to the field and learn
ed TO drink and swear. Besides this sun
day reading, secular works for juveniles
are printed; which are intended to poison
the minds of the whole rising generation
at the North against the Southerners who
are growing up with them. The flame
Of: fanaticism is to be kept burlington
years to come, and the youths OF ono sec
ton are never to be suffered to forget
that the people of another section are
theirs and were their fathers foes Much
of this infamous literature, whose evil in
tention prevents US from pronouncing it
the trash it would be otherwise, is mainly
manufactured in Massachusetts,, though
more or less of it issued in Philadelphia,
Cincinnati and in this city, and it is de-
liberately designed to instil into young
minds lifelong hatred of the South.
= For older readers the vast mass OF par
tisan war literature is doing, in its way,
the same wicked work. A morbid appe-
tite for sensational stories about the war
developed demand for that class OF
books; which led almost every lieutenant
and staff officer who could write to sud-
denly discover that the pen was much
mie6tier than the sword. We are glad
to know that there is lately large fall
j ing n off in theSsales of such works; but,
for awhile, the Harpers and others Hood
ed the market with volume after volume
of exploits performed as well as narrated
by the authors, making us wonder how,
with such hosts of terrible fellows in the
the field, secession should have survived
through q single year; or how, with such
venom toward the South, every Southern.
er was not exterminated. The diminish.
ed demand for these modern editions OF
Munchausen is more than made up by the
s monthly and weekly publications of the
Harnars: who seem to think that the war
lagaiI,st the South has just commenced
iPPorte CraYon," who gave us the ..coL
s.orads photographs of slave-life in Vir-
ginia. and who was not nearly SO proIn!i.
9ens @ in the war, nor so persistent in his
efforts to 'sput down the rebellion as ne
was, a while ago, in attempting to obtain
q lucrative foreign consulship, now makes
Harper's Magazine the medium for Sc
ries of sketches, supposed to be connected
with secession, in which he attacks his Ole
j>~-s------.s =