Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

3278 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANSWestern Reserve. His father was a Virginian, his mother, a native of Ireland.When only a mere lad, he suffered the loss of both parents. Receiving anappointment as private secretary to James D. Westcott, territorial governorof Florida, he came South, and began the study of law. But nature hadnot intended him for a lawyer, and in 1835 he found his way to Georgia, thestate with which he wag ever afterward identified, and settled in Augusta,where he was associated with Judge Longstrect as editor of the States' RightsSentinel, while still pursuing his study of law.The Seminole war broke out in this year, and Thompson joined the Richmond Blues of Augusta, serving throughout the campaign. At the close ofthe war he definitely abandoned the study of law for literature, and in 1836,established the first purely literary paper ever published in Georgia TheAugusta Mirror. He also married the woman whom he afterwards describedas ''having blessed the morn, cheered the noon, and brightened the evening"of his life Miss Caroline A. Carrie of Augusta and began what was ultimately to prove a successful career as a journalist. Success did not comeat first. The Augusta Mirror did not pay. Perhaps the interest and enthusiasm which should have been expended upon the budding literature of thetime and place found expression in the great political questions which eventhen were agitating the country and forming the theme of discussion at thecounty courthouse, the country churchyard, and wherever Southern menassembled.However it happened, a change had to be made; the young couple removedto Macon and the Mirror was merged in the Family Companion; this enterprise failing, by reason of uncongenial business connections, they movedagain, this time to Madison, Georgia, where Thompson took charge of TheMiscellany, a weekly published in that town. The paper, already prosperous,increased in public favor under his management. It was for this periodicalthat the famous "Letters of Major Jones" were written. The major was atypical countryman, a small planter of the middle class; he wrote to ColonelThompson from his home in "Pineville," Georgia, a naive account of hiscourtship of Miss Mary Stallins, and of the various and usually ludicrousepisodes and vicissitudes which attended his pursuit and final capture of theaffections of this maiden.Though there is an abundance of bad spelling and a lack of grammar,which in that day was considered a necessary adjunct of humor, the letterswere not written in dialect; and the humor, though not of a subtle or delicateorder, was not forced. The letters were faithful portrayals of the life andcharacter of the locality; true pictures of a people who were simple and unsophisticated, but honest and kindly, reverent toward God and gentle to"women and little children.These letters were so popular that Thompson was persuaded to collectand publish them in book form; but he valued them lightly, sold them for atrifle, and received a very small portion of the money they brought thepublishers.He wrote also "The Chronicles of Pineville," in which the story antedates"Major Jones's Courtship," and "Major Jones's Travels;" and in the lineof more serious if less popular literature he wrote a farce called '' The LiveIndian," and a dramatization of "The Vicar of Wakefield," which met witha favorable reception in both Europe and America. He also prepared forthe press Hotchkiss's "Codification of the Statute Laws of Georgia."In 1845 he joined the poet, Park Benjamin, in the publication of TheWestern Continent in Baltimore, a weekly of which he afterward became soleeditor and proprietor.In 1850 Thompson began the journalistic enterprise with which his nameis associated in Georgia. He founded The Morning News of Savannah, apaper which he edited continuously and successfully for more than thirty