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James Edward Henry (1796–1850)
- University of Missouri Press
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212 James Edward Henry (1796–1850) Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Henry migrated to Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1816, taught school for several years, while at the same time he studied law, and in 1821 was admitted to the South Carolina Bar. A civic-minded person, Henry served on the first town council of Spartanburg in 1832, and became the first solicitor in 1838. He was also instrumental in founding a female academy in Spartanburg.A member of the Union Party, an opponent to the tariff and to nullification, and a proslavery advocate, Henry was elected to the South Carolina Legislature, first in 1828, and was reelected in 1832, 1840, 1846, and 1848. He was also selected an aid to Major General John Belton O’Neall, who appointed him to the rank of major. Though a busy civil servant and lawyer, Henry, usually referred to as Major Henry by his friends and associates, pursued literary interests as well, his most important writing being in the genre of antebellum southern humor. He published sketches, anonymously and pseudonymously, in the Southern Ladies’ Book, the Magnolia, Charleston Southern Literary Journal, Macon, Georgia, Family Companion and Ladies Mirror, and The Orion in the 1830s and 1840s. His works treat familiar subject areas of Old Southwest humor—courtship and marriage, intemperance, the clash of social classes, courtroom jests, practical jokes, and rascally misadventures. Henry himself had a serious drinking problem, and two of his Magnolia sketches—“Tetotality” and “The Jimplicate”—humorously treat this subject. These sketches and several other of his humorous pieces comprise the “Tales of the Packolette” series published in the Magnolia between December 1840 and December 1842. Henry also published a novelette, Myra Cunningham: A Tale of 1780, written between 1821 and 1825, and focusing on the Revolutionary War in upcountry South Carolina. Henry has the notorious distinction of having been victimized intertextually by William Gilmore Simms in his posthumous backwoods tale “Bald-Head Bill Bauldy,” when he has his frame narrator Big Lie berate a Major Henry as an inferior yarn-spinner compared to the more free-wheeling and entertaining hunterBorn in Providence, Rhode Island, Henry migrated to Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 1816, taught school for several years, while at the same time he studied law, and in 1821 was admitted to the South Carolina Bar. A civic-minded person, Henry served on the first town council of Spartanburg in 1832, and became the first solicitor in 1838. He was also instrumental in founding a female academy in Spartanburg.A member of the Union Party, an opponent to the tariff and to nullification, and a proslavery advocate, Henry was elected to the South Carolina Legislature, first in 1828, and was reelected in 1832, 1840, 1846, and 1848. He was also selected an aid to Major General John Belton O’Neall, who appointed him to the rank of major. Though a busy civil servant and lawyer, Henry, usually referred to as Major Henry by his friends and associates, pursued literary interests as well, his most important writing being in the genre of antebellum southern humor. He published sketches, anonymously and pseudonymously, in the Southern Ladies’ Book, the Magnolia, Charleston Southern Literary Journal, Macon, Georgia, Family Companion and Ladies Mirror, and The Orion in the 1830s and 1840s. His works treat familiar subject areas of Old Southwest humor—courtship and marriage, intemperance, the clash of social classes, courtroom jests, practical jokes, and rascally misadventures. Henry himself had a serious drinking problem, and two of his Magnolia sketches—“Tetotality” and “The Jimplicate”—humorously treat this subject. These sketches and several other of his humorous pieces comprise the “Tales of the Packolette” series published in the Magnolia between December 1840 and December 1842. Henry also published a novelette, Myra Cunningham: A Tale of 1780, written between 1821 and 1825, and focusing on the Revolutionary War in upcountry South Carolina. Henry has the notorious distinction of having been victimized intertextually by William Gilmore Simms in his posthumous backwoods tale “Bald-Head Bill Bauldy,” when he has his frame narrator Big Lie berate a Major Henry as an inferior yarn-spinner compared to the more free-wheeling and entertaining hunter- James Edward Henry 213 raconteur Bill Baudy.And Big Lie’s biographical details make clear that the object of his derision is none other than the real-life Henry. Henry’s first and most accomplished comic sketch,“My Man Dick,” features a slave and body servant who is given extensive voice and space to mock...