SOURCE: "Moonlight and Magnolia: Thomas Nelson Page's In Ole Virginia," in Books That Changed the South, University of North Carolina Press, 1977, pp. 176-85.

Downs argues that Page showed no artistic growth as a writer and succeeded only in creating stereotypes, but he also states that Page's work is, nonetheless, important to understanding Southern literary history.

An eminent Baltimore Sun editor, Gerald W. Johnson, a native Tar Heel, declares that "the greatest enemy of the late confederacy was certainly not Ulysses S. Grant, or even William T. Sherman. . . . Far more lasting damage was done it by men whom the South adores: at the head of the list Stephen Collins Foster. . . . Deceivers of the same kind were orators of Henry Grady's school and a long procession of literary gents, beginning with John Pendleton Kennedy and culminating in Thomas Nelson Page" [The Man Who Feels Left Behind, 1961].

Johnson goes on to...