380 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lation. If we except Baltimore, Louisville, and St. Louis, neither 

 one of which is an exclusively Southern city, New Orleans re- 

 mains even to-day as the only city in the South of over one hun- 

 dred thousand inhabitants. Neither Richmond, Atlanta, Charles- 

 ton, Memphis, nor Nashville has a white population of fifty 

 thousand. With these various conditions borne in mind, it is not 

 strange that the talent of the Southern people was exercised in 

 other directions than those of inventions. 



The military qualities of Southerners have been demonstrated 

 in every war in which the United States was engaged ; and the 

 leadership in the Revolution, the second war with England, the 

 war with Mexico, and on the Confederate side during the civil 

 war, fell to the part of Southern men. Even on the Northern side 

 during the last-named contest numbers of the foremost soldiers 

 and sailors were men of Southern birth, prominent among whom 

 may be mentioned Thomas, Ord, Fremont, Newton, and Farra- 

 gut. Abraham Lincoln, the head of the civil administration 

 during the same period, was a born Southerner, and Grant was of 

 Southern extraction. In statesmanship the South had held the 

 highest rank always, and under Southern leadership all the addi- 

 tions to the national domain were made. His English ancestry, 

 the republican form of government under which he lived, the 

 call of a new country for political thinkers during its formative 

 period, the passion for governing engendered by the ownership of 

 slaves, and lastly the long antislavery agitation which saturated 

 the atmosphere with politics, all contributed to cause the ambi- 

 tious Southerner of the past to drift into public life. The de- 

 scendants of the Jamestown colonists inherited the Anglo-Saxon 

 spirit of adventure which characterized their ancestors, and it is 

 not strange that Virginia led the rest of the States of the Union 

 in the number of her pioneers who settled the West and South- 

 west. While all this is true, the talents of the South were largely 

 confined to these channels when exerted at all, and the ability of 

 the North, as has been said of it, " sought expression in a wider 

 range of subjects than that of the South." Conditions at the 

 South were not favorable to the growth of literature, art, or in- 

 vention, and there being no cities of large size, there were hence 

 no common centers of activity, where either literary workers, 

 artists, or scientists could be sure of employment, and be in con- 

 tact with sympathetic minds following kindred pursuits. Edgar 

 Allan Poe toiled away at Richmond as editor of the Southern Lit- 

 erary Messenger, but was compelled finally to drift northward to 

 maintain a livelihood. William Gilmore Simms, the only man of 

 note in the South,* besides Poe, who followed literature as a pro- 

 fession, plodded along in South Carolina among a people who 

 afforded him little encouragement, and his numerous efforts to 



