William Dawson Le Sueur (1840-1917, A Canadian Man of Letters : The Sage of Ottowa)
(The "Sage of Ottawa", William Dawson Le Sueur was a compl...)
The "Sage of Ottawa", William Dawson Le Sueur was a complex man the author argues. He was a social critic, persuasive journalist, revisionist historian, Canadian nationalist, feminist, educator, positive philosopher, and follower of Comte, Spencer and Henry George. The author argues that he contributed something of his own critical scepticism to the nexus of translatlantic thought.
A refutation of the calumnies circulated against the Southern & Western States,: Respecting the institution and existence of slavery among them. To ... place since the settlement of the country,
Edwin Clifford Holland was an American lawyer, poet and editor. He served as an editor of the Charleston Times. His writing often praised the U. S. Navy and emphasized patriotic themes.
Background
Edwin Clifford Holland was born c. 1794 in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. He was the son of John Holland, previously of Wilmington, North Carolina, by his wife Jane, the widow of Abraham Marshall of East Florida.
At that time the nascent literary culture of the town seemed promising. A flourishing theatre incited the dramatic efforts of Isaac Harby and John Blake White, while the anonymous author of Carolina (1790), a topographical poem written in 1776, and Joseph Brown Ladd were the forerunners of George Heartwell Spierin, John H. Woodward, John Davis of Coosawhatchie, and William Crafts.
Education
Holland is said to have studied law, and then to have turned to journalism.
Career
Holland was an editor of the Charleston Times, and belonged to this group of fledgling bards. He mailed several effusions north to Joseph Dennie's Port Folio and printed articles over the signature "Orlando" in local papers. In his twentieth year he published Odes, Naval Songs, and Other Occasional Poems (Charleston, 1813) dedicated to "James Marshall, Esq. , of Savannah, by his affectionate brother. " Amid the dissonances of these seventeen pieces one may catch, faintly as if in the wind, the notes of William Collins and Thomas Moore, for with this volume romantic poetry began in South Carolina. Its most sonorous lines are the opening quatrain of the ode to the memory of Captain James Lawrence: "Hark! how the Mourning Barge with heavy Sweep/ Moves to the solemn Minute-stroke of Death! / The lifeless Billow of the silent Deep/ Scarce curls beneath the Morning's orient Breath!"
In 1818 Holland's dramatization of Byron's Corsair, with many of the rhyming lines of the original ingeniously retained in the blank verse, was published and was performed at the Charleston Theatre. With William Crafts and Henry J. Farmer he is said to have had a hand in Omnium Botherum, a burlesque, apparently deserved, of Thomas Bee's Omnium Gatherum (1821).
In 1822 appeared a vigorously rhetorical Refutation of the Calumnies Circulated against the Southern and Western States Respecting the Institution and Existence of Slavery among Them, which hinted at impending war. Published anonymously, it was attributed afterward to Benjamin Elliott, who had given Holland some assistance. Two years later he died during an epidemic of yellow fever. His younger brother, William Robert Holland, died at Savannah eight days before him.
Achievements
Holland is remembered as a prolific poet and editor, as well as lawyer. His works not only praised the U. S. navy, but also stand both as a historic record of slave insurrections and as a startling document of an educated citizen’s honest, but obviously racist, beliefs.
