SOURCE: “Paul Hamilton Hayne and the New South,” in The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. XLVI, 1962, pp. 388‐94.

In the following essay, Flory refutes the theory that Hayne had no enthusiasm for the New South.

It has become almost a convention in the discussion of Southern literature to assume, if not emphasize, that Paul Hamilton Hayne had no enthusiasm for the New South.¹ This point of view should perhaps be subjected to re‐examination in the light of two observations: first, most of the letters and poems cited in support of it were written before 1880; second, Hayne's longest and most detailed poem on the subject—“The Exposition Ode” (re‐titled “The Return of Peace” in the collected edition)—has been slighted or completely ignored.

That Hayne expressed some very unreconstructed sentiments in the 1870's is most true. In a letter to Lanier, September 8, 1871, he declared his refusal to go along...