Mississippi Historical Society

“ Upon the extreme southern border of the State, where the Magnolia blooms in its native perfection, where the crested waves of the gulf work the sunbeams and the moon's silvery sheen into forms of laughing beauty that suggest the noble womanly character of the wife and the "daughter of the Confederacy," where the roaring sea, that cannot be hushed, tells of the unconquerable spirit of devotion to our people and their cause, that stood erect amid all the indignities and wrongs put upon it by a vindictive and cruel foe ”

“ Because slaves can be bought and sold it does not follow that they can be deprived of life.... The right of the master exists not by force of the law of nature or of nations, but by virtue only of the positive law of the state,—and, although that gives to the master the right to command the services of the slave, requiring the master to feed and clothe the slave from infancy till death, yet it gives the master no right to take the life of the slave, and if the offense be not murder it is not a crime, and subjects the offender to no punishment.... ”

“ We have never adequately supported our own writers. We have added to the tragedy of nations by allowing Poe to die the death of an outcast; Timrod to break his heart, without a crust to eat or a penny to buy food; Lanier not to have time to record the strains that were demanding utterance, in order to spend his wasting strength seeking support for wife and children; Russell broken in courage and in fortune to find not even a resting-place in the soil of his native State. Before the war the Southern library shelves were weighed down with Fielding, Smollett, Addison, Johnson, Scott and Dickens. ”

“ To literature she was 'Sherwood Bonner,' the young author, full of genius and promise; to society she was the beautiful, fascinating woman, always the central attraction in every room she entered, but to the companions of her youth she was only 'Kate,' the loyal, brave, trusted friend, whose untimely death has taken so much from life that it can never look the same again. ”

“ I do not say that the poet or the novelist must never revert to past history or to historical documents for his topics. His own genius and taste must be his surest guide to both as to topic and to treatment; but I do say that a nation is unfortunate if the builders of its literature invariably draw their material from foreign sources or from the history that was enacted before they were born. ”

“ The events of 1861-65 not only broke the continuity of Southern history but changed forever the social and political status of the Southern states. The past began to loom up strange and remote, but "dear as remembered kisses after death." Men seemed to have lived a quarter of a century in four years. They moved as in a world not realized. Now it is just at such periods that literature finds its opportunity, for at such periods a people's historic consciousness is either deepened or destroyed, and this national consciousness finds expression in historical literature. ”

“ As the night closed in the threatened storm swept up out of the sea, deluging [Pg 84] the city and whipping the quiet harbor into a foam; the thunder crashed incessantly, and the flashes of lightning showed stooping figures running along the bund to shelter, and hooded jinrikishas tearing by, the coolies' grass cloaks dripping at every blade."
"When one woman wishes to wound another she always strikes at her heart."
"Black was very inky and white immaculate to this son of the prairies."
"People never relish life as they do when the taste of death is still bitter between their teeth." ”

“ In conclusion, I believe that in the organization of the Mississippi State Historical Society and in the beneficent work that it has wrought during its career of nine years, I see another indication of that growing historic consciousness without which we cannot stand unabashed before the bar of future history. "Deeds of prowess and exalted situations cannot of themselves" says Schlegel (History of Literature, Lecture I) "command our admiration or determine our judgment. A people that would rank high in our esteem must themselves be conscious of the importance of their own doings and fortunes." ”

“ The Democratic orators, on every stump in the State, declared that the negro had proven himself unworthy of the right of suffrage, and should be deprived of it. They showed that wherever the negro controlled, depression and ruin were evident on every side. They proclaimed aloud that the honest, intelligent and decent white people should and would control the State. Negro suffrage had been tried for ten years with terrible results. They pointed to the ominous fact that the Southern States were behind in the road for progress, just in proportion to the number of negro voters in each. ”

“ The experiment of negro suffrage was a most stupendous blunder. Under that vicious system society was depressed to a greater degree than could be borne. For ten long years was Mississippi ruled by the adventurer, who filled the mind of the negroes with a spirit of misrule, prejudice and hatred against their former masters. He found a people impoverished by the loss of millions in slave property, and made penniless by a long and protracted war. ”

“ Even in our present state of boasted enlightenment it is questioned by many thinkers and criminologists whether we have been wise in anywhere substituting the jail for the whipping post for minor offenses. At all events, as a deterrent to petty crime among our colored brethren one sound thrashing, "well laid on," would most likely prove more efficacious than any jail sentence imposed by a latter day justice of the peace.
It was unlawful for a slave to leave his master's premises without permission, and an offense for a negro, bond or free, to have in his possession any weapons of any kind. ”

“ To the study of whatever of the states of civilization we may devote ourselves, we find that, regardless of its present position of advancement, at some period of its history the personal ownership of human beings was a recognized feature of its social fabric. Nor is it true that the existence of this institution at any certain period of a people's history can be taken as an evidence of a low state of intellectual, moral or social development during such period. ”

“ THE RISE AND FALL OF NEGRO RULE IN MISSISSIPPI.
BY DUNBAR ROWLAND, ESQ.
Twenty-three years have passed into history since Adelbert Ames, the last of the "Carpet Baggers," was driven from his high position as governor of Mississippi by the representatives of an outraged and indignant people. A new generation has grown to manhood and womanhood since those stirring times that led up to and culminated in the exposure and condemnation of the most reckless and profligate political combination and blighting curse that has ever burdened a free people. ”

“ Our citizens may be tardy in learning the necessity of affording effectual support by voluntary contributions; our local government has no lands to bestow on us. But we trust the Legislature of the United States, in whom the right of our soil is vested, will give aid to an institution which will establish republicanism in the minds of the youth of this territory, and be the firmest bond of an attachment to the Union. ”

“ It is not to see the folded hand clasping flowers, the dear forms enshrouded in fresh grave-clothes, nor to see them laid away with prayers uttered above them and friends standing by with uncovered heads, but it is to know—with what intensity of horror!—that these forms are changed to a poison so deadly, that death can be tasted in the air around them, and love itself shrinks from rendering its last sad offices. ”

“ Then, too, historical investigation is even today far more accurate and scientific than when Dickens wrote. But David Copperfield, which the critics have never called an historical novel, has an historical element that time cannot take away, for it is the record of what an accurate observer saw and felt and heard in the first half of the nineteenth century. The historical novel, therefore, in the current acceptation of the term, contributes nothing to the sources of historical study, though it does popularize history and thus help to prepare an audience for the scientific historian. ”

“ We cannot but think," goes on the Governor, "that an over-ruling destiny controlled the hiding away of the state seal, so that its broad and honest face should never be seen on a badge of servitude to European note-shavers—and the Union Bank bonds no more have the seal of the state upon them, than the figure of the bond seal looks like an eagle." ”

“ She takes her position just outside his door, and listens with agony to his moaning until the end comes, when she finds a note, written just before he expired, in which he recognizes her love for him and asks her forgiveness. After her own great sorrow she is able really to sympathize with the sufferings of others, and finally goes down to the grave respected by all who know her. ”

“ The State was turned over as so much prey to the hungriest and cruelest flock of human vultures that ever cursed mankind and the pathway towards better things was stained with the life blood of her best and noblest. ”

“ The right of a slave to act in defense of himself when assaulted by a white person was at all times recognized by the law, and while it was an offense punishable by thirty-nine lashes for a slave to "use abusive or provoking language to, or to lift his hand in opposition to a white person" yet no punishment was to be inflicted where it appeared to the justice that he was acting in self defense. ”

“ Skill in the use of a dialect is a purely literary excellence, but when a writer portrays and thus perpetuates the peculiar life of a people numbering four million, he is to that extent an historian; and Irwin Russell's example in this respect meant a complete change of front in Southern literature. He did not go to Italy for his inspiration as Richard Henry Wilde had done. ”

“ The Trustees of Jefferson College assembled at their first meeting embrace the opportunity of addressing you, our fellow-citizens of the Mississippi Territory, we are sensible of the difficulty of the Task to which we have been called by your representatives. A place of public education is to be created at a considerable expense without any public funds. The economy of our Legislature has not as yet suffered them to lay a tax on the community, to aid an Institution, which we hope will ultimately conduce to our public as well as private happiness. ”

“ She wrote a number of letters for Southern newspapers in a style that the ordinary newspaper man would strive in vain to emulate, though she regarded the letters as mere potboilers. They give interesting accounts of the happenings in Boston, and her impressions of Boston's great men: Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Wendell Philips. She says of Boston: "For the native Bostonian there are three paths to glory. If his name be Quincy or Adams, nothing more is expected of him. His blue blood carries him through life with glory and straight to heaven when he dies. ”

“ The State executive committee met in Jackson, August 15, and organized for the campaign, and its first act was to issue the ablest and most stirring address that ever came from such a body. The address was prepared by Gen. George, the chairman of the committee, and is a masterpiece of political literature, and closes with this appeal: "In this contest Mississippi expects each of her sons to do his duty; brace up old age to one more [Pg 194] effort, nerve, manhood, to put forth all its strength, and invite youth to its noblest enthusiasm." ”