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Reprint of the original, first published in 1866.
A compendium of Southern witticisms by the Confederacy's most famous humorist First published in 1873, Bill Arp's Peace Papers, by Charles Henry Smith (1826-1903), is a collection of writings from the Civil War and Reconstruction by the Confederacy's most famous humorist. Smith, a lawyer in Rome, Georgia, took the penname "Bill Arp" in April 1861, following the firing on Fort Sumter, when he wrote a satiric response to Abraham Lincoln's proclamation ordering the Southern rebels to disperse within twenty days. In his letter addressed to "Mister Linkhorn" and written in the semiliterate backwoods dialect adopted by numerous mid-nineteenth-century humorists, Smith advised the president, "I tried my darndest yisterday to disperse and retire... but it was no go." The "Linkhorn" letter, reprinted in many Southern newspapers, was wildly popular across the South, and Smith followed it with dozens of other similarly comic pieces over the next few years, all signed by "Bill Arp." During the war he mocked Lincoln and praised the bravery and sacrifice of the Confederates, but he also turned a disapproving eye on those Southerners--from draft dodgers to Georgia governor Joe Brown--whose actions he viewed as detrimental to the war effort. Following the war he turned his attention to criticizing Reconstruction efforts to reshape Southern race relations. Later Smith collected the best of these pieces in Bill Arp's Peace Papers, a valuable example of the Southern conservative perspective on the Civil War and Reconstruction era. This Southern Classics edition makes Smith's witticisms as Arp available once more, augmented with a new introduction by Georgia historian David B. Parker, which places the writings and their author in historical and literary context.
From 1861 to 1903 humorist Charles Henry Smith, writing as Bill Arp, a sly Georgia back-woodsman, was the South's most widely read newspaper columnist. Knowing the immense popularity of Smith's writings historian have suggested that southerners saw him as a voice for their concerns. While the idea that Bill Arp spoke for his region is sound, the intent of the writings has been misconstrued over time, argues David Parker. In Alias Bill Arp, Parker shows that Smith was not a contented observer of the post-Reconstruction New South as is widely inferred from his most widely read work--his syndicated weekly column in the Atlanta Constitution that he began writing in 1878. Considering the full range of Smith's work, Parker says, shows him to be one of the South's harshest critics. After a brief survey of Smith's life, Parker surveys the Bull Arp writings, highlighting their major topics, and explaining what they meant to readers of that era.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1873.
The events of my father's life may be chronicled in a few lines, but it would take many pages to tell of the mental and spiritual gifts that made that life notable, and of its influence over a wide circle of known and unknown friends. Still more potent was the impress of his character upon those nearest to him, whose privilege it was to see him day by day and partake of the wit, wisdom, kindliness and humor that made him the most fascinating of companions to his children. He has himself told in this book the main incidents of his career; how his father, Asahel Reid Smith, a sturdy young son of Massachusetts, came South to teach school and married his fourteen-year-old pupil, pretty little Caroline Maguire, whose story as her son has written it, is most interesting and romantic. They were married near Savannah but later moved to Lawrenceville, Gwinnett County, where my father was born on June 15th, 1826, the eldest of ten children. My grandfather became a thriving merchant of Lawrenceville, postmaster as well, and my father has told us many entertaining stories of the days when he used to "ride the mail" and sell ribbons and things to the girls.