This is a compendium of Southern witticisms by the Confederacy’s most famous humorist. First published in 1873 Bill Arp’s
Peace Papers
collects some of the Southern humorist’s best writings from the Civil War and Reconstruction era. Charles Henry Smith (1826-1903), a lawyer in Rome, Georgia, took the penname ‘Bill Arp’ following the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, when he wrote a satiric response to Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation ordering the Southern rebels to disperse. In his letter addressed to ‘Mister Linkhorn’ and written in a semiliterate backwoods dialect, Smith advised the president, ‘I tried my darndest yesterday to disperse and retire…but it was no go’. The ‘Linkhorn’ letter was reprinted in many Southern newspapers, and Smith followed it with dozens of other similarly comic pieces, all signed by ‘Bill Arp’. During the war he mocked Lincoln and praised the bravery and sacrifice of the Confederates, but he also turned a disapproving eye on those Southerners - from draft dodgers to Georgia governor Joe Brown - whose actions he viewed as detrimental to the war effort. Afterward he turned his attention to criticizing Reconstruction efforts. This Southern Classics edition makes Smith’s witticisms as Arp available once more, augmented with a new introduction by David B. Parker, which places the writings and their author in historical and literary context.