When we compare Southern literature of ante-bellum days with that produced since 1870 we note at once certain obvious differences of style and structure. In the older literature the sentences are longer, the paragraphs less coherent, adjectives more abundant, descriptions more elaborate, plots more intricate and fanciful. In the newer literature the pen is held more firmly; there are fewer episodes; incidents are chosen to illustrate character rather than to enhance the plot; the language is more temperate; the pathos and humor more subtle; some fixed goal is kept in view and the action of the story converges steadily toward this end. But apart from these stylistic and structural differences there are differences that appeal to the student of history equally as much as to the student of pure literature. Since 1870 Southern writers have begun to find their topics and their inspiration in the life that is round about them. They are resorting not so much to books as to memory, observation and experience. They are not rising into solitary and selfish renown; they are lifting the South with them. They are writing Southern history because they are describing Southern life. The writings of Irwin Russell, Sidney Lanier, Joel Chandler Harris, Miss Murfree, George W. Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, James Lane Allen, Miss Grace King, Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart, and John Fox, Jr., are spreading a knowledge of Southern life and Southern conditions where such knowledge has never penetrated before. And though we call this literature Southern, it is neither sectional in its appeal nor provincial in its workmanship. This, then, is what I mean by the historical element in recent Southern literature. It has long seemed to me that much of the immediate influence of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ both in this country and in England was due to the fact that the South could not show in all of its ante-bellum literature a single novel treating the same themes treated by Mrs. Stowe, but treating them from a different point of view. It was the first attempt to portray in vivid colors the social and institutional conditions of the South. None of our writers had utilized the material that lay ready to their hands. There was no story written in the spirit of _Marse Chan_ or _Uncle Remus_ which the South could hold up and say, "Look here, upon this picture, and on this." The reception accorded Mrs. Stowe's book in the South teaches a valuable lesson, and a lesson which Southern writers have for thirty years profited by _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was met by bitter criticism, by argument, by denunciation, by denial, or by contemptuous silence. But the appeal made by a literary masterpiece, however deficient or faulty in its premises, is not thus to be negatived. The true answer to _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and the most adequate answer that could be given is to be found in the historical note that characterizes the work of Irwin Russell and those who have succeeded him.