Southern scrapbook with Roanoke College satire and Confederate sympathies
A late 19th-century Southern scrapbook—most likely compiled by a woman, based on the format and inclusion of items like “Whittlings from the Block of Experience” by Clara J. Denton. Notable for containing a rare piece of Roanoke College ephemera and its overall glimpse at how the Confederacy was memorialized in popular media a few decades after the Civil War.
The first item, pasted across 3 pages, is a bogus program for “Crab’s and Paneter’s Kan-Kan Komedy Kompany, or the Uneschewable Blazon of Well’s Scintillant Neophytes. First Appearance Across the Continent from Salt Lake City to Salem,” which satirized Roanoke College professors and proceedings. Promising music, debate, and sideshow-like spectable, it reads, in part: “Owing to the fact that some of our Subjects, but a few years ago were in the embryonic, or monkey state, it has been only after long months under bluegrass culture and Darwinian treatment, that we are able to bring to notice of all lovers of science, these wonderfully particular specimens.”
The item could only be found referenced in a 1948 Salem Times-Register article about a Roanoke alumnus’ rediscovery of the publication, noting it had been anonymously written and distributed in 1886, creating controversy among professors. At the time of the article, its author was still unknown, though the article hoped "one of these months the secret will out, and then, after 60 years of glorious ignominy the once young wit of the campus will be forced to remove his tongue from his cheek" (Times-Register Volume 93, Number 35, 30 April 1948).
The remainder of the album contains newspaper clippings that represent a mix of regional sentimentalism with literary and historical interest. Several items betray Confederate sympathies articulated as Southern pride, including “The Southland’s Hero,” a poem by Walter Thomas Pope, dedicated, “To the boys in gray, in whose faithful hearts is untried the glorious memory of Robert E Lee…,” the lyrics of “Stonewall Jackson’s Way,” a note purportedly found in the hand of a dying Confederate soldier at the Battle of Sharpsburg, and the unambiguous, “Ode to the Dead Confederacy.” Other material, however, celebrates Lincoln and Darwin, potentially underscoring an ideological gap in the history of what the Confederacy stood for, versus its ongoing glorification in popular media celebrating it as "cultural heritage" without acknowledging what it really represented—a lingering debate. It remains a question whether the compiler of the scrapbook, likely born just after the Civil War, understood the implications of their Confederate romanticism.
Ca. 1885-1895. Embossed heavy card wraps with transfer-printed design “A Present from London,” 11.5 x 9 inches. Staplebound, pages cleanly detached from cover; (14) pages indicated one removed leaf. Very Good with rubbing and a short closed tear to the bottom edge of the cover, occasional edgewear, overall clean and crisp.