The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part I.
§ 4. Johnston
Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822–98) in his various writings evinces an equal devotion to the earlier times before the railroad came to central Georgia. They form a sympathetic record of the ways and characters of that humble but picturesque era. Johnston, though a slave-holder, was unwaveringly opposed to secession and the war. Nevertheless, reduced by the surrender at Appomattox from an estate of fifty thousand dollars to poverty, to him the situation seemed so hopeless that he removed, with the school he kept, to Baltimore. The autobiography, the eighty stories, and the three novels which he there produced, it is interesting to note, were written largely to assuage a sad longing for his boyhood home. These writings show him to have been, in spite of his political opinions, of the old school of Southern gentlemen.