SOURCE: Moore, Rayburn S. “The Old South and the New: Paul Hamilton Hayne and Maurice Thompson.” Southern Literary Journal 5, no. 1 (fall 1972): 108-22.

In the following essay, Moore chronicles the correspondence of poet Paul Hamilton Hayne with author and critic James Maurice Thompson, particularly as their writing touches upon the theme of postwar reconciliation between North and South.

Paul Hamilton Hayne belonged to a prominent Carolina family, several members of which had made important contributions to the history of the state. One of these, Robert Y. Hayne, governor, senator, and proponent of Nullification, was Paul Hayne's uncle and guardian after the untimely death of Paul Hamilton Hayne, Sr. in 1831. Born in 1830 in the year of the great debate in the Senate in which his uncle took a leading part and reared in Charleston, educated in Christopher Cotes's Classical School and at the College of Charleston, Hayne read law with...