“S” is for Southern Quarterly Review

“S” is for Southern Quarterly Review. The Southern Quarterly Review originated in New Orleans in 1842 but later moved to Charleston. It had the advantage of being not a literary magazine but rather a magazine open to any branch of knowledge. The Review was unabashedly a conservative southern magazine, advocating classicism in literature, agrarianism and slavery in economy, and Protestantism in religion. The antagonists were French philosophy, Voltaire, and the leaders of the French Revolution, all of whom were viewed as dangerous to government and to the South's predominant Protestantism. No magazine sketched better the idea of the southern gentleman with his “polished manners” and “moral excellences.” More than any other periodical, the magazine sought to define the incompatibilities that would necessitate the South’s becoming a separate nation. The Southern Quarterly Review’s last issue appeared in February 1857.