The Riven Oak and the Ivy

The subject of the War Between the States, as it pertained to Jackson County, Texas, and the story of the Confederacy, and its quest for independence, was one which provided ample grist from which a romance writer might glean the bountiful harvest of an inspired story. The conflict itself was not over emancipation of the slaves, though that event was a result of the war, but over different systems of economy: one commercial and industrial, the other largely agricultural. America had become two peoples, one seeking dominion over all peoples and all things, the other contented with the blessings bestowed by the good earth. Though the two peoples were joined by a written constitution, a numerical majority of one section imposed protective tariffs on the imports of the other. Tariffs are a bounty to one, a burden to the other. Tariffs have the effect of levying an unequal, and therefore unconstitutional, tax on the consumer. It is scarcely necessary to add that, although the romance is entirely imaginary, the author has naturally drawn upon his experiences and observations during the war, both in Jackson County, Texas, and while marching with his regiment, the Second Texas Infantry, C.S.A., in Tennessee and Mississippi.