Southern Issues 1: A Special Number on the South

Modern Age 2.4, 1958

Sep 12, 2024

This present number of Modern Age is concerned principally with the life and the mind of the Southern States; and possibly this is the first number of a serious quarterly published in the North to be devoted, critically and sympathetically, to the South, for these many years past. Most of the contributors to this issue are Southerners; their opinions vary widely. One of the most striking intellectual phenomena of our century is the vigor and imagination displayed by Southern writers, despite the concentration of publishing and the book-reviewing media and the influential newspaper press in the Northeastern States. News and Notes, pp. 441-442

It’s not my purpose to provide a tedious commentary on each essay, poem, and section. No, this is more akin to a stroll through a curated gallery, where we pause before certain works, and I, your humble guide, connect a few dots and link to items you may never read. The “Southern Issues” series aims to present Southern-themed issues from non-Southern publications alongside select special issues from Southern periodicals—basically show-and-tell. We begin with a favorite publication of mine, Modern Age.

Modern Age 2.4, 1958: A Special Number on the South

Contents:

Russell Kirk | Norms, Conventions, and the South
Robert Y. Drake | What It Means to Be a Southerner
Arthur Styron | For They Shall See Death (story)

A Symposium on the South: Integration, Prudence, and Principle

Modern Letters

Correspondence

Frank Uhlig Jr.
Charles E. Wingenbach
Dean Terrill

Verse

Larry Rubin | One at the Counter!
David Cornel DeJong | Village
Nelson Bentley | Sightseeing
Francis Russell | Nibelungen Song

News and Notes

Russell Kirk | Norms, Conventions, and the South

In 1932, Unity Dandridge Dancy bequeathed $12,500 to Alabama College, State College for Women. The fund initially intended to support the English, Literature, and Expression departments, was repurposed to invite scholars to discuss Southern literature and speech in the context of national culture. Douglas Southall Freeman delivered the inaugural Dancy Lecture in 1939. In the spring of 1958, Russell Kirk took the podium in Alabama College’s Palmer Auditorium, giving a lecture entitled “Norms, Conventions, and the South.”1

Kirk scrapes away the veneer of simplicity often slathered over the American South, revealing a more nuanced reality of a land where tradition isn't just lip service; it's lived. In Kirk's rendering, the South stands as a bulwark against the relentless march of progressivism—a guardian of a deeper historical continuity.

He presents John Randolph of Roanoke as a case study in Southern leadership, demonstrating how such figures maintained traditional norms even in the face of political headwinds. Through Randolph, we see the South not as a monolith but as a place where the ghost of Cicero walks alongside circuit-riding preachers—a South where the wisdom of the ancients is as vital as tomorrow's crop. Kirk dares us to cast our gaze Southward, to the land of long memories and longer shadows, to the Permanent Place.

Et cetera

“Russell Kirk’s Southern Sensibilities: A Celebration” by Alan Cornett

“Russell Kirk and the South” by Miles Smith

“John Randolph of Roanoke with Professor John Devanny”

Robert Y. Drake | What It Means to Be a Southerner

“It is apparent to many people that the South is today the one last stronghold of regional consciousness in the United States: the only portion of the country which can be said to have distinctive ways of looking at things.”

Drake is a must for anyone interested in Southern literature. An introduction:

“Robert Drake, As I Knew Him” by Jeffrey Folks
“Robert Drake and the Presence of the Past” by Thomas Hubert
Mississippi Quarterly 45.2, 1992, Essays On Robert Drake

Arthur Styron | For They Shall See Death (story)

I didn’t find one mention of Styron’s story outside this issue. I did learn Arthur Styron was an interesting fella, and historian Bernard Mayo was NOT a fan. Mayo referred to Styron’s The Cast-Iron Man: John C. Calhoun and American Democracy as “that egregious hodgepodge.” In his review of The Last of the Cocked Hats: James Monroe and the Virginia Dynasty, Mayo wrote, “Mr. Arthur Styron, who is not a professional historian, has attempted to do biographical justice to our fifth president. Unfortunately, he has not succeeded.”

Back to The Cast-Iron Man. H.C. Nixon, the “Hillbilly Realist of Possum Trot,” wrote in his review, “One has to hunt for Calhoun in this miscellaneous array as if looking for a lost child at a circus.” HOWEVER, Andrew Nelson Lytle called Styron’s book “a brilliant piece of work.”

Mrs. Anne Ward Amacher’s 1956 500+ page dissertation, Myths and Consequences: Allen Tate's and some Other Vanderbilt Traditionalists Images of Class and Race in the Old South, criticized Styron, Lytle’s review of Styron’s “Spenglerian” biography, and pretty much all the Southern Agrarians. In the Remembering Who We Are chapter “The Agrarian Inheritance: An Affirmation”, M. E. Bradford mentioned the malicious “mythographers” and a group in a deeper circle, the “merely malicious”. He placed Amacher in the latter (not sure if that’s riverfront property on the Styx or Phlegethon).

The Symposium

“Three people well acquainted with the Southern States discuss in the following pages the larger issues reflected in the present controversy over “integration” of schools for white and colored students in the South. For two of the participants, this is their first appearance in a critical quarterly of ideas. Captain Court, a Virginian, is a naval officer, much read in history. Mrs. Benagh, a Nashville housewife, writes poetry occasionally. The editors of Modern Age hope to attract other intelligent contributions, from time to time, from people outside the Academy or the learned disciplines; we feel that intellectual endeavor and serious writing in America are tending to be too much confined to academic circles, narrowly defined. Professor Stone, now chairman of the department of English at Ohio University, until recently was a member of the faculty of the University of North Carolina, and has much first-hand acquaintance with the Southern temper.” - Editors of Modern Age

John Court | Integration in Historical Perspective

I did a quick search for Captain Court and found his obituary. John Martine Court, a retired Navy captain and attorney, died of lung cancer in 2006 at the age of 90. Born into a naval family, Court served in both World War II and the Korean War, earning degrees in naval architecture and business along the way. After retiring from the Navy in 1959, he attended law school and went on to serve as assistant county solicitor for Anne Arundel County, Maryland.2

Edward Stone | A Backward and Forward Look at Integration

“Professor Stone joined the [Ohio University] English department in 1956, having taught at the University of Virginia, Georgia Institute of Technology, Duke University, and Newcomb College. He was one of the instigators of the controlled-materials method of teaching the writing of research papers and was a productive author himself. As a specialist in American literature he published more than 70 scholarly articles on authors such as Herman Melville and Henry James as well as seven books, including Henry James: Seven Stories and Studies, What Was Naturalism? and The Battle of the Books. Fulbright teaching grants took him to the National University of Mexico in 1966 and to the University of Buenos Aires in 1968. On his retirement in 1984, his colleagues in the English department established the Edward Stone Award to honor each year's outstanding English major.”3 He also wrote Incident at Harper's Ferry; Primary Source Materials for Teaching the Theory and Technique of the Investigative Essay, and Henry James and his Sense of the Past, his dissertation.

Christine Benagh | The American Dream

Mrs. Benagh “became an editor at Methodist Publishing House before starting her own firm, WordWorks. She was the author of several books, including An Englishman in the Court of the Tsar.” She passed in 2016.4 I also found her byline in Triumph and Southern Humanities Review.

Louis D. Rubin Jr. | The Coming Centennial of the Civil War

If you’re serious about studying Southern literature or plan to start collecting, Rubin is essential reading (along with Jay B. Hubbell, and I could go on and on). If you’re unfamiliar, here’s a good place to start.

Kelsie B. Harder | John Crowe Ransom As Economist

“A former student of this distinguished poet, critic, and editor examines the Southern Agrarian elements in Mr. Ransom's thought.”5

It’s unclear how many scholars Pope, Tennessee, has produced, but Kelsie Brown Harder may have been its greatest. Born in 1922 in Perry County, Harder—a country boy cursed with a girly name—became one of the most distinguished scholars of his generation in the field of onomastics, the study of names. More specifically, he was a toponymist (place name wizard). "Onym" overload threatens sleep quality.

After serving in the Army during World War II, Harder earned degrees at Vanderbilt and the University of Florida. In 1964, he joined the faculty at SUNY Potsdam, where he wrote or edited more than 1,000 pieces. He presided over the American Name Society and advised major dictionaries, while his research ranged from the language of marbles to place names across America to the vocabulary of hog-killing in his native Perry County.6

I’m most excited about reading his work in the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin:

“Hay-making terms in Perry County.” TNSB 33 (1967), pp. 41-48.
“Jingle lore of pigtails, pals & puppy love.” TNSB 22 (1956), pp. 1-9.
“Pert nigh almost: folk measurement." TNSB 23 (1957), pp. 6-12. Formations with —ful, deep, high, thick, and other measure terms in Perry County, TN.
“The vocabulary of hog killing.” TNSB 25 (1959), pp. 111-115. Ninety-five terms used in Perry County from the 1930s to 1950s.
“A vocabulary of wagon parts.” TNSB 28 (1962), pp. 12-20.
“The jake leg.” TNSB 25 (1961), pp. 45-47. TN]. Term used in Perry and Gibson Counties, TN, meaning “a crippled leg.”

You can also find his work in American Speech:

“Musseling terms from Tennessee.” AS 30 (1955), pp. 74-76. Discussion and a brief glossary of terms in the freshwater clam industry on the Tennessee River.
“A ‘tub’ of corn.” AS 30 (1955), pp. 76-77. Terms used for measuring and marketing corn.

Modern Letters

Charles G. Bell | Wanted: A Foundation for the Arts

Charles Greenleaf Bell—A Mississippian whose acquaintance might prove illuminating.

Marshall Fishwick | Two Roads from Eden

I’ve previously mentioned Mr. Fishwick.

Brainard Cheney | What Endures in the South?

Mr. Cheney, a heavyweight in the Southern letters division, reviews The Lasting South, edited by James J. Kilpatrick and Louis Rubin, Jr. Henry Regnery Company, 1957. He’s not a big fan of Southern sentimentality. The Lasting South: Fourteen Southerners Look at Their Home is a collection of essays and I highly recommend it. The table of contents:

An Image of the South by Louis D. Rubin, Jr.
The Confederate Heritage by Richard Barksdale Harwell
The Case for the Confederacy by Clifford Dowdey
The South and the American Union by Richard M. Weaver
The Land by James McBride Dabbs
The Rising Tide of Faith by Francis Butler Simkins
Woods and Water by Robert D. Jacobs
The City and the Old Vision by Walter Sullivan
Southern Religion, Mid-Century by Robert Raymond Brown
Education for the Uncommon Man by Ronald F. Howell
The View from the Window by Ellington White
The Southern Writer and His Region by Robert Hazel
A Yankee In Dixie by K. V. Hoffman
Conservatism and the South by James Jackson Kilpatrick

The more you know: The Lasting South was considered conservative, and Charles Grier Sellers compiled a “liberal” response to it, The Southerner as American (1960).7

Benjamin Casanas Toledano | Is Dixie Dead?

A review of An Epitaph for Dixie, by Harry Ashmore. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1958. Mr. Toledano is legendary in the Southern book-collecting world, known to have one of the only copies of I’ll Take My Stand signed by all Twelve Southerners. A future essay in this series will showcase the 1958 National Review issue on the South, where James Jackson Kilpatrick (see below) reviews Mr. Ashmore’s Epitaph. In that same issue, the great Andrew Lytle reviews The Lasting South (see above). It’s all* connected….

C. P. Ives | State Rights

A review of The Sovereign States by James Jackson Kilpatrick. Henry Regnery Company, 1957.

Donald Davidson | General Jackson

If you read folkchain, no introduction to Donald Davidson is needed. He reviews Stonewall Jackson: The Good Soldier by Allen Tate. Ann Arbor Paperbacks: University of Michigan Press. 322 pp. There’s plenty to say, but we’ll chew on that later. J.S. Sanders, the publisher of a later paperback edition, will pop up in my Publishers in the South series.

William McCann | Confederate Command

A review of Rebel Brass, The Confederate Command System by Frank E. Vandiver. Louisiana State University Press, 143 pp.

Robert J. Needles | Why Freud Is Not Holy Writ

A review of Beyond Laughter by Dr. Martin Grotjahn. McGraw-Hill Co., 1957.

(tilts head. shrugs shoulders)

Kenneth Colegrove | Moderation: The Noblest Gift of Heaven

Mr. Colegrove reviews Radicals and Conservatives by William M. McGovern and David S. Collier. Henry Regnery Company, 1958.

Correspondence

Context: I’m writing this during the x/twitter Churchill wars. I scroll to the Correspondence section and read: “May I comment on Harry Elmer Barnes’ essay, ‘The End of Old America’ in the Spring issue of Modern Age? Mr. Barnes’ thesis, that President Roosevelt withheld foreknowledge of the Japanese carrier attack upon Pearl Harbor, is one of a pair of old and tired stories. The other is that Admiral Kimmel, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet in 1941, was somehow responsible for the debacle.” Time is a flat circle.

Verse

I don’t have much to say about the poetry, but I’m scratching my head over some of the choices. Maybe I’m off base. They don’t seem to fit the issue’s theme; aside from Larry Rubin, I’m not seeing many Southern connections.

Alabama College, 1896-1969 by Lucille Griffith, pp 205-209. Also, see The Alabamian, May 10, 1958. In the Acknowledgments of Kirk’s Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormality in Literature and Politics, “The germ of this book was my Dancy Lectures on ‘Norms, Conformity, and Culture’ at Alabama College, in 1958.” Interestingly, coverage of the lectures in 1958 has a different title than Kirk mentions here. Dumas Malone, Joseph Cambell, and Lewis Mumford also delivered Dancy Lectures.

I summarize the full one that can be found in the Washington Post.

source

From the issue, p. 389. This essay is included in John Crowe Ransom: Critical Essays and a Bibliography edited by Thomas Daniel Young (LSU Press, 1968). Recommended read: Mark Malvasi’s The Unregenerate South, The Agrarian Thought of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson (LSU Press, 1997). Regarding Ransom’s economic views, Malvasi notes the following articles by John Crowe Ransom: “The State and the Land,” New Republic, February 17, 1932, pp. 8-10; “Land! An Answer to the Unemployment Problem,” Harper's Magazine, CLXV (July, 1932), 216–24; “Happy Farmers,” American Review, I (1933), 513–35; “Regionalism in the South,” New Mexico Quarterly, IV (May, 1934), 108–13; “The South Is a Bulwark,” Scribner's Magazine, XCIX (May, 1936), 299–303. See also Kelsie B. Harder, “John Crowe Ransom as Economist,” Modern Age, II (1958), 389–93.

Sources for this section: NYT obit. Baker, Ronald L. "Kelsie B. Harder (1922–2007)" Journal of American Folklore 121, no. 480 (2008): 219-220. Annotated Bibliography of Southern American English. University of Alabama Press, 1989.

‘The Future of Southern Letters” by Michael Kreyling in The Mississippi Quarterly 50.1,1996.

Southern Issues 1: A Special Number on the South

Modern Age 2.4, 1958

Correspondence

Verse

Discussion about this post