The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1869-10-23
sThe swamp Angel. -"

carving on an attack is quite equal to that
of General Joe Johnston in retreat. She
has an eye for a vantage ground as sharp
as that which marked and mapped every
natural rampant and bulwark Of mountain
and forest and river from Chattanooga to
Atlanta. The principles she follows we COM
mend to the literary strategists of all coun-
tries and all future ages. 1t is the principle
of the bombardment-kn to military
men from the beginning-but somewhat
novel in literature: this principle-that TO
assail an adversary successfully you must
take a position of offence where your enemy
cannot get at you.
Such were Mrs. Stoves tactics in the
Uncle Tom controversy. She gathered iso-
lated and abnormal facts and wove them into
a sensational narrative. She had the novel
lists liberty Of giving what names she chose
to the victim Of the story, and, to. further
her main purpc IS, she selected the name Of
one Of our most honored Southern states
men, to drag in the mire. When she made the
name of Legare the synonym Of cruelty and
oppression, she already prejuiged the whole
Southern question, and libelled its best de-
tenders and noblest representatives. No
J thing could be more dexterous. This sort
of attack admits of no reply. When a
character in fiction is 30 contracted as to
awaken horror and detestation, the name
piven to that character itself becomes odi-
Gus. Mrs. Stowe knew this very well. She
teok advantage Of. the circumstance. She
gathered together the most piquant and ex-
treme cases of outrage which had occurred
ON Red River plantations and other remote
regions, whose fertility has invited men OF
broken character and broken fortunes and
reckless adventure (as we'll as men Of char
acter and capital, and represented this So
cial chaos as a fair sample OF life at the
South. She erected scene of thrilling
horror-a Walpurgis night Of outraged in
nocence and hellish glee, and enthroned in
the midst of its tumult, Of blood-stained vir
gins, of witches and Of devils, master fiend
whom she named Legare. Such was the
strategy of Mrs. Stowe in her campaign
against Southern society. Uncle Toms
Cabin was erected on the principle of the
Swamp Angel" it was distant, safe, das-
tardly, destructive and inaccessible.
Had not the world been hostile to the in
stitutions of the South, so unfair a libel
would have been denounced by honorable
and generous spirits everywhere. The re-
markable dramatic skill of the book would
! not havo saved it from tho condemnation
duo to it's malignant unfairness. What
would men think Of story, spicy with the
flavor of Boston or New York police re-
ports, with Mrs. Stowe as the procuress.
or Mr.. Beecher as the felon, around whom
the most shocking details of the tragedy
were grouped; what would they think Of
such story if it were foisted upon the public
as a just representation Of the state Of North
ern society? Who would not protest against
the malicious libel? To legitimize such
travesties would be to enthrone falsehood,
to sacrifice to sensation the fair fame of any
country the novelist might chance to dis
like or OF any institution, however sacred,
which he sought to overthrow. Yet against
such attacks the injured party is defence
less. So long as there is wrong doing in
any country, and 80 long as the, authority
of any institution is liable to abuse, Bncle
Toms Cabins can lie built by the maleyolent,
and ''keys" Of any required shape or pat
tern can be fitted to them by the readers Of
newspapers, by resident inyalids, and by ira
Yelling correspondents. The sport is as easy,
as safe, and, let us add, as magnanimous,
as the pelting of frogs in pond.
Happily or unhappily, detraction grows
by what it feeds on No habit is so hard to
break as that of confessing other peoples
sins. And so, Mrs. Stowe, having used up
the South, turns her attention to England,
and lnhicts the deepest modification and
most poignant anguish upon the family con-
nection of her greatest modern poet. The
same cold-blooded sagacity is displayed in
this case as in the other. The crime she
charges upon Byron is we'll nigh beyond
the range of public discussion. The justif-
cation she adduces for the horrid and pru-
rient revelation is the claim of friendship,
and honor, and virtue. The counter testi-
mony has, for the most part, either disap-
peared in the grave or been locked up in the
memories of men bound under the most sa-
cred obligations of secrecy. In the wild and
wayward poems Of Byron, esAecially in his
dramas, and in the mystifcations in which
he delighted, there may be found plausible
grounds for charging him with the violation
Of any commandment in the decalogue
Forhe was as fond OF sensation as Mrs.
Stowe is, and went into the business not
with the cool deXterity and financial aims
of bookmaker and magaznist, but with
the reckless and rOllickins humor OF spoil
ed child. And, finally, the beloved and
honored lady, whose virtue is now assailed,
has passed from the stage leaving two
daughters whom the modesty of sex would
forbid to enter upon such discussion. Mrs.
Stowe ventures to go where they cannot.
She has planted her cannon in an inaccessi-
BILE swamp, and thence launches terror and
1aofb unon tho dnfoncolaac homol of tbo Rv-