March 22, 1937

Mr. Frank Lawrence Owley
712 8th Ave., W.
Birmingham, Ala.

Dear Frank:

This is a long overdue letter with thanks for Christmas present
and request for future favors. The most immediate future favor on
hand is this: will you do an article on Judge Robert Winston's
autobiography for our Summer issue? The book, of course, isn't
worth much as a book. But it does set out to be a kind of social
history and commentary for the period since the Civil War. I can
give you, for instance, a tidbit that will make your hackles rise
and the ink churn in your fountain pen: "Chambers of Commerce,
Rotary clubs, and Kiwanians are moving heaven and earth--building
hard-surface roads, erecting winter resorts, constructing school
houses, all this to bring in desirable settlers. But Civil War
societies are just as busy undoing this work, creating such an
atmosphere of sectionalism that practically no Northern families come
down. We have many tourists, we have winter visitors, but we have
no permanent residents, no citizens to help us pay taxes and bear
the enormous overhead which we have imposed upon ourselves in the
race of life."

We hope that you will also make an appraisal of Winston's
historical writing, and relate it to the general point of view of
this book. If you will do it, but cannot get it done in time for
the Summer issue (deadline May 15) how about the Fall? And when do
you think you would be able to work up a longish essay based on your
researches of this winter? I can't think of anything more important
or appropriate for THE SOUTHERN REVIEW than that.

Life here today resembles that of yesterday. I am very busy,
and so is Cinina. Since Christmas Cleanth and I have been trying
to push to completion the book on poetry which we should have finished
in January. But it's not done yet. In January Houghton Mifflin
notified me that they wanted several chapters of my novel by May 1--
and that, as you may guess, caused some consternation in my bosom.

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
NASHVILLE, TENN.

Apr 12 1937

Dear Red:

I received your letter and the book on Winston. I am terribly busy, but I am going to take time off to do you something on the writer and his works. Barring some miscarriage of plans + shall get the copy in by May the fifteenth or thereabout. If I had followed Winston closely it would have been an easier job; but he never impressed me as exactly a heavyweight, so I have been rather casual im my reading of the gentleman's work. Recently I looked over his first book, Andrew Johnson, Plebian and Patriot, and I found the book interestingly and incorrectly written from the standpoint of history. As a biograpgy it seemed penetrating enough. I want to glance over His accounts of Lee and Davis. All this as a preliminary to reviewing what you consider an unimportant and not well written autobiography, that is univportant and uniteresting if not considered in its relationship to the writing of Judge Winston and the attitudes of many so called intellec tuals of his way of thinking-particu; arly W.T. Couch and his school of thought (or is this complimenting Couch to say that he can think at all?)

You did not specify the amount of space that could be allotted; but I shall attempt to be economical of words: that is unless I get an inspiration and find that Winston is the peg I have been waiting for, on which to hang, among others, H.C. Nixon and W.T. Couch. If I do have such an inspiration, you may not desire to publish it in the Southern Review, in which case I shall give you an expurgated version and save my original to be administered with my estate after my demise.

I hope that you will take up John Crow Ransom's proposition to come up here and work this summer. He was talking to me about it, and seemed very anxious to have you come and stay out there while he was away. Maybe we could get to see you all at the end of the summer. My school is out on August 14.

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Nov. 30, 1937

Mr. Frank L. Owsley
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tenn.

Dear Frank:

I have been planning a long letter just for a long letter's sake, but I have as usual postponed it until a piece of business created a pressing occasion. So, not to be disingenuous, I'll attend to business first. The business is this:

Will you do us a piece on McElroy's new Jefferson Davis? say, for the Summer issue? The biography, as you probably know, is a big pre-potentious two-volume affair, and, I suppose, aims at polishing off the job for once and for all. I haven't the slightest idea what it is like, for I have read only a few pages of it. Cleanth has taken it home, however, and doesn't give a too glowing report. We are all very anxious to have you do this. You are certainly the man for it. If you find that you cannot do the job for the Summer issue, we should control our impatience until fall.

We had talked a little bit about coming by Nashville Christmas, but now that possibility seems very remote. I am running so far behind on my novel that I see no hope for me if I do not take full advantage of the holidays for work. I did manage to get a lot done this summer, up to some 80,000 words, but the fall has been so cluttered that I have only done a chapter and a half since my return. And here it is almost December. To make matters worse, Cleanth and I got a little dissatisfied with some of the things in the poetry book we had done for Holt and recalled the copy for revision. We have just finished that now. In fact, it is now lying on the table, wrapped for mailing. And thank God for that. It is supposed to be out sometime in the spring.

Have you done anything further about your farm? I am sorry that we did not get to go by the place last June and take a look at it. Now probably we shan't be able to satisfy our friendly curiosity until

Dec. 7, 1937

Mr. Frank Owsley
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tenn.

Dear Frank:

This is a hurried answer to your very welcome letter. Your news
is fine, and we'll abide by your injunction to secrecy. All best wishes
to you both.

And we are delighted that you will do the Davis. Of course, we
want the long piece, as complete a study of the subject and book as
you care to make. If you are prepared to write the longer piece on the
topic of Davis we'll certainly find space for it. We had intended, as
a matter of fact, to specify an article length review in the first
place, and it was only by accident that we omitted to do so.

I gravely fear that you are right about the war situation. I am
still an isolationist, and only hope that I can remain one.

Forgive my rush, and let me have another letter from you soon. I
am terribly sorry that the chances of a visit to Louisiana in the
immediate future are not very good, but we are hoping to come to
Nashville sometime during the year. Ginina joins me in love to you both.

As ever,

P. S. By the way, you remember that I asked you about the possibility
of putting your result of your researches on the nonslaveholding farmer
into an article for us. How do you feel about that now? When could we
hope for such a piece? And when can we expect the Davis?

Feb. 22, 1938

Dear Frank:

Your piece on Davis came yesterday (Sunday). Cleanth and I have
already had time to read it, and wish to say that we like it very much
indeed. We are sorry, as a matter of fact, that you were so bored with
the subject that you couldn't do a long, full dress piece, but this
certainly accomplishes all that could be expected within its limits.
We do, however, want to take up with you one paragraph, not with regard
to what you have said so much as with regard to possible misinterpreta-
tions. The paragraph follows:

"Perhaps it is not doing Mr. McElroy an injustice to say that he
is not sufficiently familiar with the trend of thought in the
North and in the South during the thirty years preceding the Civil
War, to understand the position taken by his protagonist. Had the
author made a systematic study of the antislavery attack upon the
South during these years, Davis' attitude and that of almost all
Southerners would have been more intelligible: certainly their
attitudes would have needed no apology. These attitudes were but
the normal psychological reactions of individuals and groups sub-
jected to sustained attacks from the outside. They were a defense
mechanism and the social psychologist would doubtless deal with
such a defense mechanism as a natural phenomenon, neither to be
defended nor condemned. Not so Mr. McElroy. In so much as Davis
defended slavery, despite the fact that the author finally dis-
covers that he was a patient abolitionist, Davis was a sinner.
(After all is it the business of the historian to pass ethical
judgments? Is it not rather the duty of the historian to explain
why individuals and peoples have conducted themselves in a certain
fashion or have thought as they have? )"

The sentence here which is underscored would remove all valued judgments
from historical matters, as it might be interpreted by some readers who
would take it to say that there should not be such valued judgments as

you make, for example, in your discussion of the crusades in the South
in THE AMERICAN REVIEW article or in the last paragraph, by implication,
in the present article. Isn't what you wish to say something like this:
that McElroy takes an absolute view of the moral question without
relating his valued judgments to the whole pattern with which he is
dealing. This might tie in, then, with the sentence about "defense
mechanism." We don't wish to seem pedantic in raising the question, as
perhaps we ourselves have misinterpreted your paragraph.

Meanwhile, we are setting up the rest of the essay.

By the way, may we have a look at the two papers which you read at
Georgia? And what's the news about your work on the nonslaveholding
farmer?

It's fine news that you will probably be in New Orleans in March.
Certainly, you can't get back to Tennessee without coming by for a stop
here. Do let us know what your plans are.

Meanwhile, our best love to you all.

As ever,

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

Feb 24 1938

Dear Red:

I am sure that you treed me:what I seem to mean is that Mr. McElroy had no right to pass an ethical judgement,but that I reserve that right for myself.I find that I was being holy on that particular occasion.I still feel holy:Mr. McElroy obviously does not have the proper ethical values,therefore he should not be permitted to express an opinion. No it is probably not quite so intollerant as that-I mean my position. I still insist that the true historian has no right to say whether a thing is morally right or wrong-not as a historian,though he may do it as a moral or immoral being. On the other hand a historian must say,frequently,that a thing,judged from accepted economic and social standards,has had a good or bad effect-your"value judgements",I think.For instance,the Civil War had a bad effect upon the South because (1) it destroyed the economic and social institutions of the South without putting any thing in their places (2) it killed and maimed several hundred thousand men (3) it sterilized the intellectual life of that section for nearly thirty years(4) it enabled the East to lay a protective tariff which has been detrimental to agriculture (5) it made reconstruction possible and this created anomosities between the negro and white people of the South and deepened the sectional bitterness already existing between North and South. It gave rise to the intellectual scalawag who makes a living out of misrepresenting the South in the North.Leaving the later

category of bad effects out, I would not consider any of these
ethical judgements-not necessarily. I am not sure but that I
stepped outside the limits of history in my Scottsboro article and
assumed the role of moralist-or immoralist.

All of which does not mean that I am putting up an argument to
retain the sentence to which you refer: quite the contrary, I am
thoroughly convinced that It should be taken out. Nor do I want
you to hesitate to pull anything else out so long as it does not
alter my fundamental meaning, namely that McElroy does not know
any too much about the cause of the Civil War.

Before I went to Georgia I wrote Collins about my lectures and
he wired me immediately to send them to him, that they sounded as
if they were down his alley. I revised them somewhat and sent them
to him. That was nearly four weeks ago. I have not heard from him
since. He apparently is doing his own editing since Stone has
set up for himself, with the result that the American Review comes
out sporadically. My/reason for offering the essays to him rather
than to the Southern Review was because the essays were too long
for one article and I doubted the feasibility of continuing the
essays in two issues of a quarterly. However, it could be done for
the articles stand pretty well on their own feet. I am going to
send you the essays in a few days and let you consider them. If
you like them and find that length stands in the way of publication
I might be able to meet your specifications. Please be frank and
let me know what your reactions are. If possible, should you want
to use them, I shall withdraw them from Collins unless he is ready
to publish them soon. My reasons are quite numerous for wanting
publication within a reasonable time: The Georgia people are

desirous of having them published; I want them in print because I have said quite a number of things that I have not been able to say -based upon my recent research in the population of the old S South. Last and because I really like to eat, I want the revenue derived from the publication of an article.

The study on the non slave holder has had to wait on the painful process of compiling statistics. I have not felt the urge as yet to break into print with too much generalization, though I have generalized in the above/article concerning several matters which I have been studying. Lambert Davis has been urging me for the last eight months to write an article on cotton as a basic factor in creating colonialism in the South. It also touches the study which I have been making; but I want you to have the basic story-when and if I ever get it rounded up. I made Davis a tentative promise; but between you and myself I fear the Greeks bearing gifts. I have a feeling that Davis believes that such a study would logically undermine the agrarian position in places. He is wet, of course, for the agrarian position is against over emphasis on staple crops. But maybe he does not know that.

There has been working in my mind an idea touching an essay strictly historical, but non technical and one possessed of considerable popular interest. I wonder whether the Southern Review would entertain the idea of publishing such an essay. I want to write an essay on Confederate propaganda in Europe, centering the essay in two personalities, Henry Hotze and Edwin De Leon. It would be a postmortem on a spectacular performance with scant financial support. Hotze, of course, was the smartest man connected with the Confederacy, and he was a Swiss!

July 30, 1938

Mr. Frank Owley
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tenn.

Dear Frank:

It's mighty good to hear from you, and I am looking forward eagerly to seeing the manuscript. You can be sure that it will get the closest possible attention. I suppose that it will come in in the next mail, and I shall write you about it then.

Meantime, I am writing about the other matters at once--writing you immediately in part because I haven't written in so long and because I am so glad to hear from you. We have had a very pleasant summer, though most of our friends are away. Albert, Katherine Anne, Tinkum, and I have been holding the fort almost alone. I wish we could come up to Nashville, and it is just possible that we may, though I believe that we shall have to spend our vacation when summer school is out next week near by on the Gulf Coast. But it would be mighty pleasant to visit you, considering our completely delightful time when we were last with you.

The news about the Harmsworth professorship is interesting and exciting. I shall naturally keep completely quiet about it until it is time to speak. My guess is that you ought to be able to live very comfortably on $5200. Living in England is high, it is true, but I have an idea that most of the professors and the dons get along very well on a smaller sum than $5200. I don't know the situation at Queen's College, but many of the colleges have an endowed table certain nights of the week for the fellows of the college, endowed sherry, etc. Queen's is a very wealthy college, by the way. This item is a small one, of course, but it would lighten the entertainment burden somewhat, for you would be seeing your immediate associates at the college primarily at the High Table and after. I have found that living in the college cost me around $250 to $300 for six weeks. This included everything, college fees, fuel, food in the college, room rent, etc. I found that

ALPHA OMICRON PI

MRS. FRANK L. OWSLEY
SOUTH CENTRAL DISTRICT
ALUMNAE SUPERINTENDENT
& VANDERBILT CAMPUS
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

October 18 1938

Dear Red:

We hoped until it was too late that you and Cinina would come to Nashville en route back to Baton Rouge. I have a feeling that you all do not like us any more up here; you never come through any more.

It would have been very interesting for us to hear you all discuss the European situation as well as to tell about your personal experiences and observations of a more private nature.

By the way, I suppose that Cleanth told you that I was approached by Ambassador Kennedy-in- fact I thought that I was offered the job- with reference to the Hrismith Professorship of American History at Oxford? It turned out that finally two persons were under consideration before the matter was closed, and the other man got the consideration- or did he? That is, in case of the war that seems inevitable. Wertenbaker of Princeton was given the place. And by the way, in view of the fact that I was in effect offered the job in June when Kennedy was here, and a month and a half later got a lame letter from Kennedy to the effect that Wertenbaker had been appointed for a year, I am inclined to think that something happened that made the Oxford council reconsider. I think that what happened was that McElroy, the present incumbent, also a Princeton man and a former colleague of Wertenbaker, read my review of his book on Jefferson Davis in the Southern Review, and used what he had to get some one else to succeed him. This is a guess and probably the wrong one. At any rate, I am not downcast under the present circumstances, though

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63

ALPHA OMICRON PI

MRS. FRANK L. OWSLEY

SOUTH CENTRAL UNIVERSITY
ALUMNAE SUPERINTENDENT

6 VANDERBILT CAMPUS
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE at Oxford.

chappier conditions † should have loved to spend a few years

This brings me to the Daniels book: in that I am not running for
any thing right now, and also that I have heard much about the book
both favorable and unfavorable-not having read it to be able to
have an opinion-I should like to go through the book and take it to
pieces and see how it ticks. Perhaps Mr. Daniels is a young edition of
Judge Winston, perhaps a young edition of Eddy Mims or a duplicate
of Virginius Dabney. At any rate he breathes hot and cold out of the
same hole under his nose. It would be interesting to look him over. So
I shall look forward with pleasure to receiving the book from you
and going through it. I can not promise a review by the time you get
in your winter edition until I learn when that dead line is. However,
I shall begin work on it about the first week in November. If the book
what I think it is, I can think of several things to say.

I am going to be in New Orleans during the meeting of the
Southern Historical Association which meets around November 3: can
you come down for a day or so-you and Cinina? I am on the program, but
I want you to miss that part. My subject is the "Social Structure of the
Old South", which is a general discussion of certain phases of the
work we have been doing on this angle for two or three years.
I shall use Tennessee and Alabama data as illustrative material. Be
sure and come down for at least one meeting. That Association is the
white hope of the South. We have a membership of eight or nine hundred
already.

Since I saw you the work on this restudy of the Old South has
assumed colossal proportions. Consequently, I have begun to assign
Ph.D dissertations on each state, though I am reserving one or two for my
special study. The work has turned out to be so fundamental that

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64

ALPHA OMICRON PI

MRS. FRANK L. OWSLEY
SOUTH CENTRAL DISTRICT
ALUMNAE SUPERINTENDENT
6 VANDERBILT CAMPUS
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE

and yet so exacting and tedious that one or two people could never
do it in a life time. My hope is to get through a good portion of it
by means of carefully supervised dissertations, and do a series of
historical essays on it myself in the meanwhile. Eventually, I hope to
make a synthesis of the whole South in book form. Now, I am pleased that
you are still interested in an article on the subject; but I am not
sure that I will be able to say something of a sweeping nature that
further investigation might not force me to alter or even retract. I
can say some general things about the border states and the lower
South; but thus far I have not gone into the older seaboard states—that
is that part of the South which was once Anglo-American. So I had
better wait to write you an essay, on that subject. If the thing I
worked out like I believe it will in view of what we have found thus
far I will be able to say that up to now most of the things said
about the social and economic structure of the Old South were said
in ignorance and perhaps in malice.

When is your novel coming out? I have been waiting to hear that
you had set the woods on fire—for I am looking for that very thing.

Allen and Caroline were here to an autographing party for Allen's
novel. Andrew and his "child bride," as he calls her, were here. We had
a good old fashioned time. Wish that you all could have been here. I
like Allen's novel. It is having a good sale. I do not know much about
the tricks of the trade; but I thought that he planned and executed
his work splendidly. I thought that it was jazzing it up a bit, however,
to have all the Posey's cracked pots and Yellow Jim George Posey's
half brother. However, that certainly gave it a bang. Andrew and De Soto
are not out of the wilderness yet. Love to both from all

Frank C.

Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee

April 13 1939.

Dear 

First, let me thank you for the book; and then let me say that there have been few books -novels- that have gripped me as much as this one did. The action was powerful, filled with suspense and was marching like a well organized army from beginning to end. I was so much stirred by the story that I could not take time to reflect upon the finer aspects of your art, upon why you did just this little thing instead of that: When I have more leisure, I want to go back and study your work instead of being plunged headlong, partly unconscious, through one of the most powerful and impressive stories that I have ever sat up past mid night to read. This book, despite its fine artistry, should be a best seller-except for one thing: the jews who buy the books or the yankees who buy the books do not know a tobacco stalk from a rag weed; nor do they know that any such powerful, rugged "bastards" as our Southern countryside produces. In short, as the urban sociologists would say your novel has a "rural bias"-that is, it is set in rural terms. Now if we Southerners were a free people and owned our own country and its wealth and could afford to buy books, you would sell half a million copies. As it is, the city bastards will probably not buy over fifteen or twenty thousand copies of the best novel that has come out in God knows when- in the English Language.

I think that Gone with the Wind was crude and powerful, filled with old stereotyped tricks and all that, but powerful in that it had a true and powerful story to tell. Your book had a powerful story and no crudeness: infact, as said, your art was so subtle that it could only sense it in my headlong flight through your all to few pages-damn the publishers for having you cut any of it out!

There are many questions I want to ask you-though I'll wait till I see you to ask most of them. I was struck with two things that were deliberate and effective: your use of Mrxx"Mr" and your assumption of only a partially omniscient role as author. Never, do I remember, did you completely enter into the stream of x consciousness of Mr. Munn. For example, while it was perfectly understandable why a man should kill Buck Trevelyan, nevertheless you avoid entering the recesses of Percy Munn's mind on that occasion when he shot the bastard. It is understandable why Munn led a group back to shoot those who had killed Benton Todd and why Munn went to kill senator Tolliver; but you do not exhibit his mental processes in this connection. It is probably more effective that you did not do so. I am interested in this. I recall that Faulkner never gives what is in a man's mind at any one time; but constantly returns, from time to time, to throw further light on the

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subject. However, as in *Absalom! Absalom* I had the feeling that he had
in the end at least drained the mind of the narrator.

Let me say this: Percy Munn seemed to me to be a man of more than
average ability, honesty and loyalty; yet the story of his involvement
in an ever more complex and confusing situation would or could imply
that he was a weak person. Or did you mean to show that only those
with the rarest perception such as Captain To dd could possibly know
when to withdraw from something that seemed harmless and justifiable
at first, but that to such a man had the implications of inevitable
evil? Whether you meant it or not-but I feel that you did- Percy
Munn's involvement and inevitable destruction could be the fate of any
of us. Personally, I have been involved, not in a tobacco war, but in
things almost as dangerous, just as "unn was involved, step by step, each
step seeming logical, inevitable and until too late, not evil. Right here
at this university, ^ have along with others whom you know and respect
if not more, have been involved in issues that were as dangerous to
those involved as to Munn. If we had lived in a rural community and had
been more accustomed to direct action than a university community
permits, here would have been violence and even death. There are two men,
for instance, whom I would have shot down on sight, under any but
a urban, university atmosphere. I believe that Hanier would have done
likewise. Maybe we see the evil possibilities of such an involvement
but do not have the moral courage to stay out of it when we see who se
who trust us and depend upon us get tangled up or propose something
that has almost inevitably bad results. At any rate, Percy Munn's
involvement seems to me to be typical, not of a weak man, but of a
man with considerable guts, intelligence and honesty. Of course there is
Dr. MacDonald who knows from the beginning that there may, probably will,
be violence and death; but he has weighed the moral elements on both
sides and decided that violence and death are justifiable and that
the good to be gained will outweigh all other considerations. Such a man,
as you demonstrate, being sure of what he is doing, though it be violent
feels justified, and is never diintegrated by impact with evil. Even had
he been put in prison such a man would not have been affected. He
would have come out with the mental observation that he had been right
but had been overpowered by evil.

Well, I could ramble on; but you see from my rambling that I
have been greatly stirred by your novel.

Love to you both

P.S. We were greatly distressed to learn of the death of Cinnabar's father. Horrors sent for a wire as one - to California. She will write soon. We have had flue, epomnions and flues. IFO