When the Civil War began, South Carolinian William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) lost access to his New York publisher. However, he revised two old manuscripts, placing them in 1863 in Richmond weeklies--the Southern Illustrated News and the Magnolia Weekly. Both were up-dated by allusion to military, historical or social events of 1863. Simms understood the effective use of serialization and was able to maintain his audience's loyalty by using allusions to war events and descriptions of the superior Southern culture.
Benedict Arnold is important for revisiting Simms's theories of dramatic license and the relationship between history and art. More interested in dramatic effect than in wrenching the history to the polemics of the day, still Simms pointed out that Southerners have lost "faith in Northern Historians. . . . their Arnolds, and their Putnams were traitors . . . . Their historians are of a piece with their generals."
Paddy McGann is significant for its social commentary on North and South and its well developed Southwestern humor format. Its theme of Southern Nationhood has three segments: man's inability to fathom God's will; comparison of North and South; and the assumptions of Southern home life. Paddy McGann "chronicles the disintegration of the idealized Southern social order," according to critic Dye.
Besides dashing his region's hope for independence, Simms's personal catastrophes during the war were so frequent and so grave that he believed that Fate was chastising him, but he held fast to his faith that God and endurance in public work would make him stronger. Simms's only new war-time publications were overlooked for more than a century--and one remains unpublished except for its ephemeral periodical appearance.
Dr. Kittrell Rushing or Dr. David Sachsman 311 Frist Hall Communication Department The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee 37403-2598 http://www.utc.edu/commdept/conference/
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