...AMONG THE PINES; or, South in Secession-Time. By Edmund Kirke. New York: J. R. Gilmore. 1862. 12mo. pp. 810.

  This is a well-told narrative of life in the turpentine regions of North Carolina, in and concerning the family of a wealthy planter who has a white wife whom he respects, a quadroon mistress whom he loves, and two sets of children. The story is clear and terrible with the lurid light of the passions, miseries, and violences that grow out of slavery. We are well assured that it is a simple and faithful account of things that actually happened, varied only so much as was necessary to avoid inexpedient revelations of personality and location. The book is a striking and truthful portraiture of slave society; a powerful and even painful story; and worth reading, far more for instruction than for pleasure; its excitement is too angry and deep. There need be no fear that it is exaggerated. Nothing here can be exaggerated if Legree is not. And it is known to the writer that when "Uncle Tom' Cabin" appeared and was read in Louisianian plantation parlors, surprise was commonly expressed that the scenes on the Red River plantation should excite emotion among Northern readers, because they were ordinary matters of fact in the Southwest.