[1][2] His father was a Baptist minister, and his early education was received at a country school and finished at Mercer University.

In 1857, he accepted an appointment to the chair of belles-lettres and oratory at the University of Georgia in Athens, retaining it until the opening of the Civil War, when he began a school for boys on his farm near Sparta.

This he kept going during the war, serving also for a time on the staff of Confederate general Joseph E. Brown, and helping to organize the state militia.

One of his teaching staff was Georgia-born poet Sidney Lanier, who persuaded him to begin to write for publication, although he was then more than 50 years old.

His stories presented a nostalgic view of Southern plantation-based slavery that became the foundation of Lost Cause ideology.