Justice in the By-Ways, a Tale of Life

Excerpt

PREFACES, like long sermons to fashionable congregations, are distasteful to most readers, and in no very high favor with us. A deep interest in the welfare of South Carolina, and the high esteem in which we held the better, and more sensible class of her citizens, prompted us to sit down in Charleston, some four years ago (as a few of our friends are aware), and write this history. The malady of her chivalry had then broken out, and such was its virulence that very serious consequences were apprehended. We had done something, and were unwise enough to think we could do more, to stay its spread. We say unwise, inasmuch as we see, and regret that we do see, the malady breaking out anew, in a more virulent type-one which threatens dire consequences to this glorious Union, and bids fair soon to see the Insane Hospital of South Carolina crammed with her mad-politicians.

Our purpose, the reader will not fail to discover, was a high moral one. He must overlook the means we have called to our aid in some instances, remember that the spirit of the work is in harmony with a just sense of duty to a people among whom we have long resided, and whose follies deserve our pity, perhaps, rather than our condemnation. To remain blind to their own follies, is the sin of weak States; and we venture nothing when we say that it would be difficult to find a people more dragged down by their own ignorance than are the South Carolinians. And yet, strange as it may seem, no people are more energetic in laying claim to a high intellectual standard. For a stranger to level his shafts against the very evils they themselves most deprecate, is to consign himself an exile worthy only of that domestic garment

Tar and feathers. in which all who think and write too freely, are clothed and sent away.

And though the sentiments we have put forth in this work may not be in fashion with our Southern friends, they will give us credit for at least one thing-picturing in truthful colors the errors that, by their own confessions, are sapping the very foundations of their society. Our aim is to suggest reforms, and in carrying it out we have consulted no popular prejudice, enlarged upon no enormities to please the lover of tragedy, regarded neither beauty nor the art of novel making, nor created suffering heroines to excite an outpouring of sorrow and tears. The incidents of our story, which at best is but a mere thread, are founded in facts; and these facts we have so modified as to make them acceptable to the reader, while shielding ourself from the charge of exaggeration. And, too, we are conscious that our humble influence, heretofore exerted, has contributed to the benefit of a certain class in Charleston, and trust that in this instance it may have a wider field.

Three years and upwards, then, has the MS. of this work laid in the hands of a Philadelphia publisher, who was kind enough to say more good things of it than it deserved, and only (as he said, and what publishers say no one ever thinks of doubting) regretted that fear of offending his Southern customers, who were exceedingly stiff in some places, and tender in others, prevented him publishing it. Thankful for the very flattering but undeserved reception two works from our pen (both written at a subsequent period) met, in England as well as this country, we resolved a few weeks ago to drag the MS. from the obscurity in which it had so long remained, and having resigned it to the rude hands of our printer, let it pass to the public. But there seemed another difficulty in the way: the time, every one said, and every one ought to know, was a hazardous one for works of a light character. Splash & Dash, my old publishers, (noble fellows), had no less than three Presidents on their shoulders, and could not be expected to take up anything "light" for several months. Brick, of the very respectable but somewhat slow firm of Brick & Brother, a firm that had singular scruples about publishing a work not thickly sprinkled with the author's knowledge of French, had one candidate by the neck, and had made a large bet that he could carry him into the "White House" with a rush, while the junior partner was deeply immersed in the study of Greek....