by Randy Reynolds
In the waning years of the 19th Century, throughout the 20th
and beyond, it was not only the people of the South who yearned for the "Lost Cause" myth to be true. There was (and is) a market throughout the country
for the alternate history of slave days, a "history" filled with kindly
enslavers, the happily enslaved, the rightness of the Southern cause, and the
patriotism of the rebels who fought against the USA.
Colonel Henry W.J. Ham (1851-1907) made a good living
catering to that market. A lawyer by
training, a former Georgia legislator, and eventually a newspaper owner in his
adopted home town of Gainesville, Georgia, Col. Ham had been 9 years old when
the Civil War broke out, so he did have some memory of ante-bellum days in
Burke County, Georgia—memories no doubt augmented with tall tales picked up
from oldsters yearning for the time before the war, from sermons by preachers
who themselves were former enslavers, and from accounts in textbooks tailored
for believers in the "Lost Cause".
The Georgia Cracker, Gainesville ’s
weekly newspaper in the 1890s, frequently mentioned Col. Ham’s success as a
lecturer on the Chautauqua circuit. Col. Ham owned The Georgia Cracker,
so he was praising himself, but other papers praised him, too:
from THE georgia
COL. HAM RETURNS.
his Annual
Tour Has Been Highly Successful
“His own
chautauqua at Maysville , Mo. ,
was one of the best ever held west of the Mississippi
River . A number of the leading lecturers of the country were there
and the program offered many other splendid attractions. Col. Ham held the platform for ten
days and captivated the westerners with his lectures.
“His tour
has been a highly successful one, and his fame as an orator and lecturer is
spreading. There are still greater things in the future for him."
FROM
the georgia
CHAUTAUQUA A SUCCESS.
“The western papers are teeming with eulogistic accounts of the Maysville, Mo. , Chautauqua. As the program was made and the entire management was in the hands of our own Col. Ham, all this is of course of interest to our people.
“… the Maysville,
“Monday …
Col. Ham gave his lecture, 'Old Times in
Dixie .'
This was a fitting finale to the Chautauqua. He depicted the scenes and incidents of plantation life in a manner
to make the picture almost real and recalled to many a mind happy incidents
gone never to again return. He declared the old colored mammy of the South was
the queen of the plantation; the overseer bossed the negroes, the owner of the
plantation bossed the overseer, his wife bossed him and the mammy bossed the
wife. The colored mammy was a personage of great importance. She knew
everything pertaining to the plantation, was consulted on every occasion, and
from whose edicts there was no appeal. He
related many touching incidents, sang plantation songs in a manner to delight
his audience and to reveal him as a vocalist who might rival those of much more
pretentions.”
Other reviews of Col. Ham’s lectures:
H. W. J. Ham carried
his audience way down in Dixie land, Tuesday evening in his lecture, and so
clearly portrayed the characteristics of the Georgia Crackers, so vividly
delineated the picturesque scenes of the Southern plantations, and so
characteristically described the peculiar individuality of the Uncle Remuses
and Aunt Rachels that everyone in the audience could imagine themselves right
in the midst of the Southern scenes and partaking with the picturesque old
"colonel" the soothing draughts of mint julep. The lecture was
instructive, entertaining and enjoyed by all present. ~ Seymour (Iowa ) Press
To listen to his
lecture on "Old Times in Dixie" is to wander through the sylvan
groves with the scent of jasmine and magnolia in your nostrils, hear the songs
as the plantation darkeys sang them, sit on the wide veranda of the plantation
home and sip mint juleps with the lordly but jolly owner and personally know
"Black Mammy" and "Uncle Remus." ~ Talent , New York
