The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864, page 189 by Various Authors
<< Return to Title Details & Download190
ICHMOND. By EDMUND KIRKE, Author of 'Among the Pines,' 'My Southern Friends,' etc. New York: Carleton, publisher, 413 Broadway. 1864.
The author of this work, having been familiar with the South in days more tranquil, had 'a desire to study the undercurrents of popular sentiment, and to renew his acquaintance with former friends and Union prisoners,' and so visited the Southwest in May last: the present volume thus originated. We cannot very readily discern how much of this work is fact, how much fiction. We have the Union scout, the poor white, the negro, and other elements belonging both to the romance and reality of Southern life in these days of struggle. Are the exquisitely simple and heart-touching thoughts and expressions which fall from the lips of the poor white or scout, actually true, or are they the coinage of Mr. Kirke's own vivid fancy? Notwithstanding the hideous jargon in which they occur, if real they evince a high soul, even in the midst of ignorance, and are the gems of the work. The book ends with a detailed account of the author's introduction to Colonel Jaques, and their subsequent visit to Richmond, an episode in our history quite as curious as the Sanders and Greeley conference at Clifton House, and one which has excited quite as wide an interest. Mr. Kirke says of the poor whites: 'I have endeavored to sketch their characters faithfully--extenuating nothing and setting nothing down in malice--that the reader may believe what I know, that there is not in the whole North a more worthy, industrious, loving class of people than the great body of poor Southern Whites. Take the heel of the man-buying and woman-whipping aristocrat from off their necks, give them free schools, and a chance to rise, and they will make the South, with its prolific soil, its immense water power, and its vast mineral wealth, such a country as the sun never yet looked upon, and this Union such a Union as will be the light of nations and the glory of the earth!'
POEMS OF THE WAR. By GEORGE H. BOK