Southern Colonies

The earliest writing in American literature consisted mainly of the travel journals and accounts of discoveries of British explorers of the southern colonies, sometimes in the form of newsletters and practical handbooks. Back in England, people planning to move to the New World would read such books as travel guides. But this was dangerous, because, while describing the New World, their authors also publicized their adventures and tried to attract settlers by mixing facts with propaganda and fantasy (for example, one of the writers, William Wood, claimed that he had seen lions in Massachusetts). It is also probable that these 'true reports' also had another kind of audience who read them as tales of adventure and excitement. Like modern science fiction fans, such readers enjoyed the exciting imaginary voyages to places they could never visit in reality.

A sample of such writing, satisfying readers of both kinds, was provided by a man called the first American writer – Captain John Smith (1580-1631). He was a soldier-adventurer who in 1607 founded the first permanent British settlement in America – Jamestown, Virginia, explored New England and wrote pamphlets describing the new land. His books, however, were not accurate scientifically, and actually were real literature. Smith was an incurable romantic, and embroidered his adventures with many imaginary details.

In A True Relation of... Virginia (1608), which is regarded as the first book in American literature, he describes how he and other colonists established the Jamestown settlement and what hardships they survived. The book not only provided information, but also glorified Smith as an able governor[3] and was aimed at attracting settlers and winning financial support for the colony. Smith used his imagination and further elaborated on his experience in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624), where he told a version of the famous story of Pocahontas, the first legend in the history of American literature. The story claims that Pocahontas, the daughter of an Indian chief, a beautiful Indian princess, saved Smith's life when he was captive to her father, king Powhatan, who was about to have him killed:

…two great stones were brought before Powhatan: then as many as could [Indians] layd hands on him [Smith], dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head, and being ready with their clubs, to beate out his braines, Pocahontas, the Kings dearest daughter, when no intreaty could prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid down her owne upon his to save him from death: whereat the Emperor [Powhatan] was contented he [Smith] should live.

Although the primary objective of these volumes was to glorify their author and to explain colonizing opportunities to Englishmen, they are valued because Capt. Smith was the first person to write fiction about English settlements in America. Despite their ornate Elizabethan style, which is not always easy to read, these books reveal Smith as an able narrator and have the enormous vitality of much English prose of the epoch.

Yet, colonial life in Virginia was best described much later, in the 18^th century, by William Byrd II (1674-1744). A southern aristocrat educated in England, Byrd returned to America to lead the life of a country gentleman, a rich planter, a political leader and agent for the colony. He visited the French Court, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, owned the largest library in the colonies and was friendly with some of the leading writers of his day, particularly with William Congreve. Byrd's London and Virginia diaries, published as Secret Diary (1941) and Another Secret Diary (1942) are full of fancy dinners, glittering parties, and womanizing, with little introspective and soul-searching. They give intimate glimpses of colonial times and help bring to life this refined and witty colonial gentleman who possessed gaiety and grace of expression, like the Restoration wits whose works he clearly admired. These diaries are fine examples of the keen interest southerners took in the material world: the land, its plants, animals, and settlers.

Byrd's most notable public act was to survey the boundary between Virginia and Carolina, fighting his way through the great Dismal Swamp. He described this adventure of 1728-1729 in the History of the Dividing Line, published in 1841. This work about settlement life in the backcountry amusingly tell about the "line" that divides the orderly society of Virginia from the less polished settlers of North Carolina and remains a humorous masterpiece. The quick impressions that the vast wilderness, Indians, half-savage whites, wild beasts, and every sort of difficulty made on its civilized author, form a uniquely American and very southern book. Byrd ridicules the first Virginian colonists, 'about a hundred men, most of them reprobates of good families,' and jokes that at Jamestown, 'like true Englishmen, they built a church that cost no more than fifty pounds and a tavern that cost five hundred.' His other works, A Journey to the Land of Eden (1723) and A Progress to the Mines (1732)describe his two visits to the interior of North Carolina and compliment his picture of the life of the American South.

But there was the other side to such joyful planters' life, described by the authors like Richard Frethorne, who traveled to Jamestown as an indentured servant, powerless from the start, with the only wish to return home. The letters from such people provide an intriguing corrective to the promotional efforts of those who had power.

In time, each southern and middle colony was similarly described: William Penn 's (1644-1718) Brief Account of the Province of Pennsylvania (1682) and Thomas Ashe 's Carolina (1682) were only few of many works praising America as a land of economic promise. Present-day readers may still be amused by the wit and satire of A Character of the Province of Maryland (1666) by George Alsop (1638–1666), an indentured servant, and charmed by A Brief Description of New York (1670) by the publicist Daniel Denton (c. 1626–1696).

Colonial hardships in the southern and middle colonies are reflected not only in diaries and letters but in humorous satire as well. A group of irritated settlers lampooned Georgia's philantropic founder, General James Oglethorpe, in a tract entitled A True and Historical Narrative of the Colony of Georgia (1741). They pretended to praise him for keeping them so poor and overworked that they had to develop 'the valuable virtue of humility' and avoid 'the anxieties of any further ambition.' A rowdy, satirical poem ' The Sotweed Factor' by Ebenezer Cook satirizes the colony of Maryland, where the author had unsuccessfully tried to become a tobacco merchant. Cook exposes the crude ways of the colony with high-spirited humor, and accuses the colonists of cheating him. It concludes with an exaggerated curse: 'May wrath divine then lay those regions waste / Where no man's faithful nor a woman chaste.'

In general, southern colonial literature was aristocratic and secular, reflecting social and economic plantation life, which was civilized, even elegant. However, people in the Southern Colonies were not intellectual and had little need to write. Furthermore, social conditions did not encourage them to do so. The southern upper class was shaped by the classical British ideal of the noble-minded aristocracy more concerned with such pleasures as horseback riding and hunting than hard work and education. Faithful members of the Church of England, they accepted religion as a matter of course and felt no need to write about it. Isolation of plantations from each other and the rest of the colonies resulted in the lack of native audience for southern writing.

Due to all these factors, the South's great contributions, both to statecraft and to literature, came later. The significant writing of colonial times was done in New England, where American literature may properly be said to have begun.

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