The Dominion of Southern America was developinga rich local tradition in food, music, and literature. While some critics in England felt that the popular culture of the Dominion was vulgar, others found it refreshing. The literature of the early Dominion was famous for the Southern Gothic novel and so-called 'Western' story, and towards the mid 19th century, a romanticism with the Plantation lifestyle, Neo-Plantationism, become popular especially among the upper classes.
Robert Daley's semi-autobiographical novel, 'White Gold' was a typical example from the 1870s.
"George Tuttle sat on the veranda of the big house, enjoying his tea as he mused about the arrival of his bride to be. Anna Belle was from poor, Scotch Irish stock, but her fair skin would make up for the coarseness of her ways. George's own father had been the son of a planter and his slave-woman, but had run away to fight with the Loyalists. His surname, Tuttle, had been adopted by his father, not after the man who had sired him, but the Loyalist militia colonel who had taken him in and treated him like a man, fighting side by side for the British Empire. After the war, George's father took up trading between the Civilized Tribes of Indiana and the rest of the South. He'd found himself a half-breed squaw-bride among the Cimeroan, making George half white, a quarter native, and a quarter negro. He was thankful that so much of his good, white ancestry showed. That and his father's war service and wealth from his very successful business had bought George a fine education and entry into more polite society. George was grateful to his father, but he was a man of the land, not a trader. When he came into his inheritance on his father's death, he had bought his dream, a plantation of good cotton growing land, in West Florida; he hadn't wanted to deal with the tribal politics of Indiana. George sipped his tea as the carriage brought Anna Belle to the front of the big house. He gestured for his negro boy to play some music on his banjo. The boy was talented, son of one of his few remaining renters, negros who still clung to the land, unlike so many before who had migrated to the cities or the west. More than half of the plantation was being worked by Hindoos from the Asian subcontinent by now. He had sent the boy, Randolph, down to the Dominion capital at Baton Rouge, to learn all the new music coming out of the delta, catchy stuff that he hoped would please his new bride. She was a sweet girl. However, it would be a spell before he could take her on his arm to polite society parties. His mistress, a fine negro woman educated down in New Orleans, would take her in turn under her wing to teach her the finer points of polite society. Anna Belle swept up the steps of the veranda, a sweet smile on her face. As he stood to receive her, he thought how good life was along the Mississippi."