Received letters from The Southern Spy
(Apparently some issues digitizing the following, but I think the main ideas come through.)
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch December 19, 1861:
Southern literature.
We learn that the new book–The Southern Spy–by Mr. E. A. Pollard, lately published by Messrs. West & Johnston, of this city, is having a most rapid sale, the first large edition being nearly sold out. The work has a ar interest for the times in being an of Washington politics and the intention of the Lincoln war; but, apart from particular interest, the favor with which has met evinces a welcome disposite- the part of the reading public of the to sustain their own library enter- and to take an interest in the evident beginnings of an independent Southern literature.
The Southern Spy is a series of anonymous letters written to Northern leaders such as Lincoln, Seward, and General Scott between April and July 1861. Since Edward Alfred Pollard “was clerk of the United States House Committee on the Judiciary” between 1857 and 1861, I guess he was in a good position to sign those letters as “The Southern Spy”.
Pollard was also known for 1859’s Black Diamonds Gathered in the Darkey Homes of the South, another series of letters, which among other things calls for the re-opening of the slave trade. After the war Pollard wrote The Lost Cause Regained.
The Dispatch hails the birth of Confederate literature
