SOURCE: "The Politics of a Literary Movement," in Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor, Little, Brown and Company, 1959, pp. 46-72.

In the following excerpt, Lynn describes the political context in which Southern humorists wrote, and analyzes how Jacksonian politics influenced their works.

If one would read a noteworthy humorist of [the late eighteenth century], one must turn away from imaginative writing to the letters and speeches of John Randolph, the "wittiest man of his age." For a generation and more, Randolph defended his vision of the "Old Republic" with brilliantly sarcastic characterizations of the men who, he felt, were wrecking it. Thomas Jefferson was "that prince of projectors, St. Thomas of Cantingbury." John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay were "Blifil and Black George—the Puritan and the blackleg." The lawyer and merchant Edward Livingston was "a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he...