One of the most popular authors of the Reconstruction South, Thomas Nelson Page not only articulated a consistent view of plantation life as he saw it but also served as a spokesman for his generation of Southerners. Page's contemporary, Southern novelist and historian Grace King, wrote that it was difficult to say in simple terms what Thomas Nelson Page meant to other Southerners at that time. "He was the first Southern writer to appear in print as a Southerner, and his stories, short and simple, written in Negro dialect, and I may say, Southern pronunciation, showed us with ineffable grace that although we were sore bereft, politically, we had a chance in literature at least."

The wide appeal of Page's vision, in the North as well as in the South, seems directly related to its departure from historical reality. To readers everywhere, Page's daydreams were more desirable than...