Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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Chapter 8: the Southern influence---Whitman

We have had to speak, thus far, mainly of work done within three somewhat narrowly restricted areas, with their respective centres in or about Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Before the outbreak of the Civil War a distinct type of literary energy manifested itself in the South, with Charleston, S. C., as its principal centre. In earlier days the South was the region in which literature had its slowest development. Even then, however, it possessed a single writer who, representing the best type of Southern colonist, should be considered before we approach the work of the thoroughly Americanized Southerner. This writer was Colonel William Byrd of Westover, Va., whose very interesting papers have recently come to light. Byrd founded the city of Richmond, lived in lordly fashion, and had perhaps a larger library than any man in New