How Walter Scott Started the American Civil War

Scott Horton argues that the Romanticism of Sir Walter Scott altered the Southern character and led to the Civil War. A fascinating short essay, which includes this quote from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (1883).

Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never should have had any war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild proposition. The Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves; so did the Southerner of the Civil War: but the former resembles the latter as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter’s influence than to that of any other thing or person.

NewMexiKen would argue that the influence extends to this day.