Charles C. Jones, Jr. has become better known as a historical institution than as a historian. Since he was singled out by C. Vann Woodward as the first Georgia critic of the New South, Jones has symbolized the unreconstructed Southern colonel, fulminating against the tide of modernity, quaint, a little pathetic, and altogether harmless. The publication in 1972 of the Jones family correspondence edited by Robert Manson Myers has revealed Jones in a different light, as a person of intellectual breadth, of great sensitivity, and of a deep commitment to honor. Jones, by his example and through his writings, represents a code of excellence. In that sense he is neither pathetic nor outmoded.

Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., was born in Savannah, Georgia, on 28 October 1831. His father, the Reverend Charles Colcock Jones, was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. Jones's, mother, Mary, was as deeply religious and as intellectually gifted...