Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 2
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[318] eighty, including fourteen books, ten pamphlets, twenty-two magazine articles, and twenty-nine addresses. His indefatigable industry demonstrated the energy and the diligence of the old order, yet his writings are characteristically aristocratic and grandiose when compared with the more scientific researches of later scholars like John Bell Henneman (1864– 1908), whose voluminous editorial labours represent very well the activity of the new generation.

Strange to say, the breath of the new era first faintly stirred those who had been in the thick of the fight. It was, perhaps, not so strange that men like Zebulon Baird Vance (1830-94) and Benjamin Harvey Hill (1823-82) should be reconciled to the outcome. Vance was not only a strong Union man but he opposed secession with all the fire of his oratory until the moment that he heard of the attack on Sumter. It seems natural, then, that after the war he should sing again the glories of the Union, one and indivisible. His Sketches of North Carolina, however, which had appeared serially in The Norfolk landmark, show much the same fond longing for the past which charms in Johnston and Bagby. Hill in Georgia fought for the preservation of national unity even in the secession convention, yet, once in the war, he was as fervent in the support of the Confederacy. This fervour was intensified by the Reconstruction policy of the National Government. His Notes on the situation in 1869 were vitriolic in their denunciation. Much of this belligerent attitude appears in his speeches in Congress. They have a narrative quality which, though less lofty, is more telling than the ringing rhetoric of some of his peers.

The case of General John Brown Gordon (1832-1904) is even more memorable. His brilliant record in the Confederate armies was closed by his generous address to his soldiers after the surrender at Appomattox, in which he exhorted them to bear their trials bravely, to go home in peace, to obey the laws, to rebuild the country, and to work for the weal and harmony of the Republic. In spite of the iniquities of Reconstruction, his political career was instinct with the same chivalrous spirit, which found its most widely echoing expression in that speech in the Senate in 1893 when he pledged the South to maintain law and order. His Reminiscences of the Civil War, with