The western sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1887-1926, 1889-01-03

[Jiadge 4. " 7Jurgee in the Forum for Dec.

More than twenty years ago the
writer ventured the prediction that
the short but eventful lifetime of the
Southern Confederacy, the downfall
of slavery, and the resulting conditions
of Southern life would furnish to the
future American novelist his richest
and most striking material. At that
time he was entirely unknown as a
writer of fiction, and it is probable
that he is now generally supposed to
have turned his attention in this direc-
tion more from political bias than
from any literary or artistic attrac-
tion which it offered. The exact con-
verse was in fact true; the romantic
possibility of the situation appealed to
him even more vividly than its politi-
cal difficulty, though, as is always the
case in great national crises, the one
was unavoidably colored by the other.
Slavery as condition of society has
not yet become separable, in the
minds of our people, North or South,
from slavery as a political idea,
factor of partisan strife. They do not
realize that two centuries of bondage
left an ineradicable impress on master
and slave alike, or that the line Of
separation between the races, being
marked by the fact of color, is as i'm
passable since emancipation as it was
before, and perhaps even more por-
tentous. They esteem slavery as sim
ply dead, unpleasant fact of which
they wish to hear nothing more, and
regard any disparaging allusion to its
results as an attempt to revive de-
funct political sentiment.
. 1t is not surprising, therefore, that
the literary men of the North should
have looked upon such foreca.t with
contempt and impatience. 1t seemed
to them to be not only absurd, but in
spired by malicious desire to keep
alive the memory of an epoch which
it was the duty Of every one to hep
bury in impenetrable oblivion. That
was a foolish notion. A nation can
never bury its past. A country's his
tory may perish with it, but i, can never
outlive its history. Yet such was the
force of the determination in the
Northern mind to taboo allusion to
that social condition which had been
the occasion of strife, that the editor of
a leading magazine felt called upon to
make emphatic protest against the
obnoxious prediction. However much
of pathos there may have been in the
slaves life," he said, with the posi-
tiveness of infallibility, ''its relations
can never constitute the groundwork
of enjoyable fiction. The colored race
themselves can never regard the estate
of bondage as a romantic epoch, or
desire to perpetuate its memories.
Slavery and rebellion, therefore," he
concludes, "with the conditions at
tendant upon and resulting from them,
can never constitute a popular field
for American fiction" Time is not
always prompt in its refutation of bad
logic, but in this case he is not charge.
able with unnecessary delay. In
obedience to pronounced and un.
deniable popular demand, that very
magazine has given a complete rever-
sal of its own emphatic dictum, by
publishing in q recent number a dia.
lect story of Southern life written by
one of the enslaved race.
! Under such circumstances, however
it is hardly surprising that the writer's
farther prediction should have been
regarded as too absurd for refutation
He himself is almost startled, as he
looks at the dingy pages, to find him
self averring, in the very glare of ex
piring conflict, that "within thirty
years after the close of the war of le
bellion popular sympathy will be with
those who upheld the Confederate
cause rather than with those by whom
it was overthrow; our popular heroes
will be Confederate leaders; our fiction
win be Southern in its prevailing
types and distinctively Southern in it
character" There are vet seven
years to elapse before the prescribed
limit is reached, but the prediction il
alfeady almost literally fulfilled MOI
only is the epoch of the war the favor.
ite- field of American fiction to day
but the Confederate soldier is the
popular hero. Our literature has be.
come t<only Southern in type, but
distinctly Confederate in sympathy
The federal or Union soldier is not ex
actly deprecated, but subordinste ted
the Northern type is not decried, bu
the Southern is PREFER ed. This il
not because of any essential superior.
ity Of th4 one or lack of heroic attri
butes in the other, but because senti
ment does not always follow the lead
of conviction, and romantic sympathy
is scarcely At all dependent upoI
merit. The writer makes no preten
sion to having foreseen the event
that have occurred in the interval tha
has elapsed. Even the results he bu
imperfectly comprehended, having NJ
lclear anticipation of the peculiar
forms which Southern fiction woult
assume. The one thing he did per
ceive, and the causes of which r,
clearly outlined, was the almost un
paralleled richness of Southern life O
that period as a field for fictitious mar
rative.
| But whatever the cause may be, i
cannot be denied that American fic
ton ofto-day, whatever may be it
origin, i, predominantly Southern il
/ type and character. The East an,
| ths West had already been in turl
the seat of romantic empire. Ameri
can genius has traced with care eacl
step in the mysterious process b,
i which the sdude" was evolved from
/ The Puritan and the "cow-boy frou
the pioneer. From Cooper to Haw
lthorne, the colonial and Revolutions