From the pages of forgotten journals and literary magazines Michael O'Brien assembles fourteen pieces that effectively challenge the long-prevailing notion that the mind of the Old South was superficial, unintellectual, and obsessed with race and slavery. In this book are discourses on subjects ranging from English empirical thought to neoclassical aesthetics, from the enfranchisement of women to transcendental theology, from the works of Hawthorne and Emerson to the social system of Virginia.

Contributions by: James Hervey Smith, Jesse Burton Harrison, Hugh Swinton Legaré, Thomas Roderick Dew, George Frederick Holmes, Henry Augustine Washington, James Warley Miles, Charles E. A. Gayarré, Frederick Adolphus Porcher, Louisa Susanna McCord, Richard Henry Nisbet, Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, James Henley Thornwell