South, The, region including the present states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, West Virginia, eastern Texas, and formerly Delaware. The area was explored and colonized by the French and Spanish during the 16th century, among their leaders being Narváez, Ponce de León, Cabeza de Vaca, De Soto, Ribault, Laudonnière, Jolliet, Marquette, and La Salle. The first settlement was made at St. Augustine, Fla. (1565), and Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries were prominent in the early colonization, although the settlers also included Huguenots.
Roanoke and
Jamestown were the first English settlements, the latter being founded by the
Virginia Company. Except for the books of Sandys and John Smith, the English writing of this period was mainly promotional or descriptive, e.g. the works of Whitaker, Pory, Alsop, Hammond, Strachey, Hariot, and the authors of the Burwell Papers.
From the beginning, the South was characteristically agrarian, and the second wave of colonists, including wealthy Cavaliers who came during the interregnum, stimulated the growth of the aristocratic plantation system, in which the staple crops of tobacco, rice, and later cotton were worked under the institution of slavery. There was little popular education, and, even after the founding of William and Mary (1693), education was mostly restricted to the upper classes. Southern culture thus tended to follow the aristocratic Cavalier tradition. The dominant Episcopal Church crushed dissent in most of the colonies, although Catholicism flourished in Maryland under the Calverts, Oglethorpe's Georgia was nonsectarian, and in the 18th century Virginia became comparatively tolerant. As a result of various restraining forces, art and literature in the early South were of little consequence. Most of the writing was historical, as in the works of Beverley, Lawson, Blair, Stith, and Hugh Jones, although there were also the satires of Tailfer and Ebenezer Cook, and the charming journals of Byrd. Southern patriot leaders in the Revolutionary struggle included Patrick Henry, Washington, Jefferson, the Lees, Madison, the Randolphs, Francis Marion, George Mason, and Pickens, and many battles in the later phases of the war took place in the South. These men continued as leaders of the new republic; of the first five presidents, four were Southerners, while Washington, D.C., became the capital of the U.S.
During the 19th century, however, the economic system of the South, based on slave labor, separated the region from the North, which became increasingly industrial, and, with the frontier West, assumed greater political and financial power. Such differences as had appeared in the Federal Constitutional Convention led to the Southern emphasis on states' rights, especially after the Louisiana Purchase (1803), which brought within the U.S. the whole region of the
Mississippi River. The widening schism was marked by such crises as the Missouri Compromise (1820), Calhoun's opposition to the Northern “Tariff of Abominations,” the conflict over the Mexican War and its spoils, the Compromise of 1850, the struggles in Kansas and Nebraska, and the Dred Scott case. The survival of Spanish and French traditions, especially among the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana, made for distinctions, as did the tendency of the Border States to share the interests of the North. Southern aristocrats tended toward statesmanship rather than literature.
The agrarian emphasis may be seen in Jefferson and John Taylor of Caroline, the feudal gentility in J.P. Kennedy and the laudatory biographies by Marshall, Wirt, and Weems. The English Augustan tradition appears in the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, the Delphian Club of Baltimore, and the
Russell's Bookstore Group in Charleston, influenced both by neoclassical views and by the romanticism of Scott, as is evident in the writings of Legaré;, Simms, and others. The fiction of N.B. Tucker was based on Calhoun's philosophy; William J. Grayson was an apologist for slavery; W.A. Caruthers and J.E. Cooke were slight historical romancers; Lamar shows the influence of Byron; and Poe and Chivers represent Southern romanticism carried into the realm of metaphysical mysticism. Regional periodicals included the
Southern Literary Messenger, De Bow's
Review, and
The Southern Quarterly Review. The sectional feeling expressed through these and other media reached its peak in the
Civil War, when the South seceded from the Union, to form the temporary political association of the
Confederacy. During this time the enslaved blacks⧫ of the region, kept from education, rarely had an opportunity to express themselves in the written word, although it was occasionally achieved, often by freed persons, like Benjamin Banneker, Martin Delany, and David Walker. With secession came increased chauvinistic literature from white authors. Among the poets of the war and its sequel were Hayne, Timrod, J.R. Randall, Father Ryan, Lanier, J.R. Thompson, and Margaret Preston.
During the period of
Reconstruction, the former social and economic framework was overturned by the abolition of slavery and the new status of blacks. Something of the Southern situation in this period was depicted by the Northerner Albion Tourgée. The local‐color movement included such Southern authors as Joel Chandler Harris, Richard M. Johnston, George W. Cable, Kate Chopin, Mary Murfree, John Fox, Lafcadio Hearn, and John T. Moore.
In the 20th century the literature of the South has become not only distinguished but very diverse, yet it has often laid stress on
regionalism. The most outstanding fiction, like Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha saga, has used precisely delineated local settings and situations to create a microcosm for the treatment of universal issues. Some fiction has emphasized romance, the past, and fantasy, as in different ways the novels of Margaret Mitchell, Hervey Allen, and Cabell have. Some fiction has concerned itself with the problems of a new industrialism, like the novels of Olive Dargan and T.S. Stribling. Some of the novels and plays have concentrated on the ways of life and the folklore of blacks, as have the works of Roark Bradford, Paul Green, DuBose Heyward, and Julia Peterkin. At long last black writers have been able to treat their own heritage in significant works of literature, although in many instances the authors have been from the South but have not remained residents of the region. Black writers who have depicted the South or its impact on their lives and their culture are very various and include William Attaway, Arna Bontemps, Sterling Brown, C.W. Chesnutt, William Demby, W.E.B. DuBois, P.L. Dunbar, Ernest Gaines, Alex Haley, Chester Himes, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Ishmael Reed, Albery Whitman, and Richard Wright. But the 20th‐century South is too large, its writers are too many, too individual, and too important to be grouped according to subject, school, or heritage.
