 | Macaria, or, Altars of sacrifice |  |
NOTE ON AUGUSTA EVANS' “MACARIA” IN MILDRED LEWIS RUTHORFORD'S
“THE SOUTH IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE”, ATLANTA, 1907.
“... The War between the States cut her off from her publishers,
so it was many years before she ventured on her third novel “Macaria”.
She sent a copy of this book with a letter to the publishers through
the blockade; it was carried safely to Havana, and thence to New York.
The book had already been published by a bookseller in Richmond,
Virginia, and printed in South Carolina on Coarse Confederate paper.
It was entered according to the Confederate States of America, and
dedicated to the brave soldiers of the Southern army. Some portions
of the manuscript were scribbled in pencil while nursing the sick
soldiers in “Camp Beulah” near Mobile. A Federal officer in Kentucky
seized and burned every copy of the Confederate edition of “Macaria”
which he could lay his hands upon. In some way a Northern publisher
obtained a copy and published it, but swore he would pay no royalty
to so “arch a rebel.” Lippincott & Derby expostulated with him, and
finally secured a contract by which the author should receive a certain
amount for each copy sold.
“In one of the battles fought during the retreat of the Confederate
army from Chattanooga to Atlanta, a Southern soldier claims that his
life was saved by a paper-bound Confederate copy of “Macaria” which he
had hastily folded and placed in the inside pocket of his gray coat,
when called from its porusal beside a campfire to go into battle. The
bullet which might otherwise have killed him was found imbedded in the
thick, coarse, yellow leaves of the novel.”
| Macaria, or, Altars of sacrifice | |