It is not, however, desirable that the present Introduction should degenerate into a dry historical essay devoted to certain obscure points in the economic history of the South, although it does seem important that the reader should realize that the citizens of Southern towns between the years 1800 and 1860 were not altogether lacking in enterprise and foresight. Yet the period mentioned is so interesting in many ways that it is hard to leave it. It would be pleasant to sketch briefly the efforts made to develop literary centers--especially at Richmond and Charleston: the establishment at the former place of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, forever connected with the fame of Poe; at the latter, of the earlier and the later _Southern Review_ and of Russell’s _Magazine_, connected, respectively, with the names of Hugh S. Legaré, William Gilmore Simms and the ill-fated Henry Timrod, whose genuine poetical genius is slowly being recognized. It would be interesting, too, to discuss the political influence wielded by such newspapers as the Richmond _Enquirer_ and the Charleston _Mercury_. A topic no less important is the effect of the classical culture undoubtedly possessed to a considerable degree by the leading citizens of the older towns upon the problem, only now being solved by the New South, of affording every child a free and sound education. A discussion of this topic would naturally lead one to inquire into the status of the lower and middle classes in the _ante-bellum_ Southern towns, and this would necessarily carry us very far afield. Perhaps the best way to break the train of these suggestions and reflections is to ask the reader whether he would ever have thought it possible for a German immigrant to become a day-laborer in a Southern town, to save enough money in six years to build an important bridge and wharf, to found a town of his own which soon became a flourishing cotton market and actually, as its leading personage, to enter into quasi-diplomatic relations with the government of Hamburg, Germany! Yet all this actually happened in the “unprogressive” _ante-bellum_ South. The man’s name was Henry Schultz; the town in which he made his fortune, and, sad to relate, subsequently lost it, was Augusta, Georgia; the town he founded was Hamburg, South Carolina, which it must be confessed has not become a metropolis and is chiefly known in connection with certain important riots.[2]