The Civil War's Impact on American Literature

American literature was greatly impacted during the Civil War era of 1861-1865. With many literary artists involved and interested in the war, they used the war's inspiration in their writing and helped readers to relate to the war better and understand its challenges. Authors and Poets found great inspiration in the brutal and gory battle scenes or created their own nonfiction stories based on things they knew or had heard of from the battle scenes. Many artists even witnessed the battles or lost family and friends during the war. Some chose to bring out the war's romantic side, while others chose the somber more gruesome side.

To begin with are those literary artists involved with the war. Elizabeth Akers Allen wrote "In the Defenses" while working as a government clerk in Washington and tending to wounded soldiers during the Civil War.(3) Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote "Fredericksburg" while working as a war correspondent for the New York Tribune and later as an editor of the Atlantic Monthly; he describes on of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. On December 13, 1862, at Fredericksburg, Virginia, Union soldiers under the command of General Ambrose Burnside, attacked Confederate troops under Robert E. Lee.(3) James Dickey wrote "Hunting Civil War Relics at Nimblewill creek" while serving as a fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War and later worked as an advertising executive.

Another would be our president, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address given at Independence Hall on February 22, 1861, restored peace and order to the distracted condition of the country. He gave liberty, not only to the people of this country, but, he hoped, to the world, for all future time.(6) He also wrote the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. It was a signed executive order declaring that all slaves held throughout the confederacy; carrying tremendous psychological and moral weight, and also declaring plainly that the Civil War was now being fought as much too free millions of men, women, and children from bondage as to reunite the shattered country.(6) He was a great public figure and a free-thinker; holding that the universe was a grand mystery and a miracle. Nothing to him was lawless, everything being governed by law; there were no accidents in his philosophy; every event had its cause. Everything to him was the result of the forces of Nature.(6) In 1842, he delivered a remarkable address before the Springfield Temperance society; it is quite evident that his hopes for the world are still confined to a human utopianism which doesn't yet embody the will of God. "The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions" written in 1838, before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield saw himself in a heroic role, extremely ambitious. He sympathized with the South; he did not approve of slavery; but he didn't much recent the slaves' masters. The debates in 1958 drove Lincoln to make bold statements and formulate a point of view which still exerts a very strong authority over the Northerner's conception of the Civil War. On June 16, "House Divided" reverberated all throughout the political world, which is echoing still in our minds. "A house divided against it cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure; permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the House to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."(6) Debates with Douglas on October 15 simply stated that slavery is a wrong, and not merely social and political, but moral. "Cooper Institute" on February 27, 1860 on the eve of his campaign for presidency, "let us has faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."(6) "Letter from the Lost Townships" in 1842 was a satirical, handles colloquial language with a similar sense of style: vein of homely frontier humor. "Eulogy on Zachary Taylor" in 1850, striving for a loftier eloquence, learns to disembarrass and discard the old-fashioned ornaments of forensic and congressional oratory. Always able to summon an art of incantation with words, and knows how to practice it magnificently.(6) "The Rise of American Civilization" in 1927, of the strategy of the economic interests at work in the Civil War, you will get no inkling, for the reason that he had none himself.

Another was Sidney Lanier wrote "The Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson" while serving in the Confederate Army and seeing action in several major engagements. He depicts Thomas Jonathan Jackson, a brilliant military tactician, who earned his nickname in the first battle of Manassas, when he and his brigade withstood Union troops "like a stonewall." He also wrote the chivalric romance of the South that was to merge with German romanticism. To become inflated and irised, made to drip with the dews of idealism, to a degree that is rather startling even to one who has become familiar with its earlier manifestations. He translated and paraphrased German lyrics and even wrote some verses in German, after enlisting in the Confederate Infantry at nineteen-years-old. He also wrote "Tiger-Lilies" while serving in the Confederate Army during the winter of 1863-1864, and finished in 1867; which takes place in the South with flashbacks to Frankfurt-am-Main. The war in his writing was described with romantic exploit, in which a company of gallant knights were defending their country and their honor.(6) He served for almost four years and took part in the seven days battles around Richmond. Later on, he and his brother Clifford, got transferred to the signal corps and spent a year and a half near the mouth of the James.(6) "Our life, during this period, was as full of romance as a heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hair-breadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting."(6) In 1864, he was assigned as a signal officer to a ship that was running the Yankee Blockade; it was captured and he was sent to the prison of Fort Lookout in Maryland. His imprisonment lasted till the end of the war, disappointing his musical and literary ambitions, also turned him into an invalid and shortened his life.(6) He was among the truest men of letters that our country has produced; and in 1878 he wrote "Hymns of the Marshes" with new colors, new rhythms, and a new way of experiencing life. It dealt almost exclusively in imagery of a conventional romantic kind and in allegories and moral abstractions.

And still another was Ambrose Bierce wrote "Corporal" while fighting in the battles of Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, Franklin, and Kenesaw Mountain, where he was wounded. In 1913, he ventured to Mexico to join Pancho Villa's forces as an observer and died there under mysterious circumstances.(6) His father gave him a sound taste in literature and inspired him with literary ambition as a youngster; and he was sent to a military academy in Kentucky. In 1861 at Fort Sumter, he was second in his country to enlist, not quite twenty-years-old, he had three years of active service in the infantry, which gave him a record of bravery and energy.(6) He took part, under General Hazen, in the second day of the battle of Shiloh, advancing in the teeth of terrific artillery, between Owl Creek and the Tennessee River. A number of his short stories were based on real incidents remembered from this battle, and he transposed the Owl Creek from Tennessee to Alabama, and made use of a hanging that took place at this time for "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." His regiment went on to the siege of Corinth; they pursued General Bragg and took part in the battle of Stone River, which lasted three days, "perfect discipline, dauntless courage, and general fighting abilities."(6) He was made a first lieutenant and transferred to the staff of William B. Hazen as topographical engineer. He also took part in the engagements of Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Missionary Ridge. His "Chickamauga" manages to make us feel the indignity and absurdity of war, while a at the same time suggesting its nullity from the point of view of a being that should not have any stake in it. In February 1864, he started out with Sherman on the march toward Atlanta, but he was wounded at Kenesaw Mountain; which gave him the title of a fearless and trustworthy man. He was also present in the battle of Franklin and wrote "The Major's Tale." After the war he stayed a topographical engineer, then resided in San Francisco and became a successful journalist. He then became obsessed with death in his writing; his principles and opinions were said to be "a chaos of clear ideas." He also wrote "A Bivouac with the Dead" and "Ashes of the Beacon" in 1861. He was respectful of all the faiths, but conceived them to be all the creations of men.(6) His writing with its purged vocabulary, the brevity of the units in which it works and its cramped emotional range is an art that can hardly breathe; however, he lacked the tragic dimension.

And even another would be Alexander H. Stephens was a prisoner at Fort Warren, had a view of preserving in it some regular record of the incidents of his imprisonment and prison life. He was also the former Vice President of the Confederacy and wrote "Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens" in 1910, it was dismal but heroic. He had been arrested while calmly attending to his correspondence at his home in Crawfordville, Georgia on May 11, 1865. He was imprisoned for four months and nineteen days, May 25- October 13, till almost the end of July he was held incommunicado; he was then finally released on October 21.(6) He suffered disabling attacks of pneumonia, abscess of the liver, bladder stones, kidney trouble, facial neuralgia, and migraine, caught cold, uncertain digestion was taxed by rude prison fare: bacon, beans, and tough beef.(6) He was humiliated, ill, and sometimes wept. It was still possible he'd be tried and hung. "In my judgment, the authorities have no settled purpose."(6) "A Constitutional View of the Late War Between States; Its Causes, Character, Conduct, and Results Presented in a Series of Colloquies at Liberty Hall," written in 1867 and 1870. It was a work of political philosophy, in which the whole history of the U.S., from the Declaration of Independence on, was methodically reviewed and analyzed. He also wrote "The Reviewers Reviewed" in 1872 and "A Comprehensive and Popular History of the U.S." in 1882, and Maleaska in 1860. His history has been forgotten, but his work has endured as a great, cold, old monument which few people have cared to visit but which no one has succeeded in demolishing.

Finally another would be Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes went to Harvard and wrote "One-Hoss Shay", a parable of the break-up of Calvinism, intended to show that destructive or peculiar tendencies on the part of an individual are due not to original sin but to "prenatal influence", special heredity or early trauma. He also wrote "Elsie Venner" in 1861 and "The Common Law" in 1880. He served in the Civil War, after enlisting at age twenty in April 1861, and was subjected to a desperate ordeal, which, instead of having the effect of impelling him to turn to God, caused him to definitely dismiss this deity.(6) He was badly wounded in the chest at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in October. The Civil War experience cured him of apopocalyptic social illusions. He was wounded again at Antietam in September and again at Fredericksburg in May of the following year. In January 1864, he became a lieutenant-colonel and was made aide-de-camp to Major General Horatio Wright. He then went on to Harvard Law School in 1864-1866. He wrote "American Law Review" which was exposure of the squalid scandals of the Grant administrations being exposed, one after another, in the papers. He brought out of the war a tough character, purposive, disciplined, and not a little hard, a clearly defined personality, of which his humor and affable manners, his air of being a man of the world and the ready susceptibility to feminine attraction which he sometimes paraded a little, could never quite embellish the bleakness.(6) His concentration on his work and his grim industry, were astonishing to those who knew him at the time when his career was still developing to make.

Next, other literary artists were captivated through their creative imaginations. Thomas Buchanan Read wrote "Sheridan's Ride". He describes a battle at Cedar Creek, a small tributary of the Shenandoah River on October 19, 1864. Union General Philip Sheridan was returning from Washington on his horse, Rienzi, when he heard a volley of fire; he rallied his confused men and led successful but costly counterattack against General J.A. Farly's Confederate troops.(3) Herman Melville wrote "The March into Virginia", "A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight", and "The College Colonel". He never served in the war, but he was a staunch Unionist and made frequent visits to Fort Hamilton and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, once venturing to the Virginia Front prior to the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. He also wrote "Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War" in 1866. Julia Ward Howe wrote "Battle Hymn of the Republic." During the war her "Glory Hallelujah" chorus became the unofficial anthem of the Union Army; she was also a poet and lecturer on social reform and was interested in abolitionism and women's suffrage.(3) John Greenleaf Whittier wrote "Barbara Frietchie". In September 1862, on his way to Antietam, Robert E. Lee divided his army, sending Stonewell Jackson to take the Union garrison and Harpers Ferry. En route, Jackson passed through the town of Frederick, Maryland, portrayed in Whittier's poem. He also wrote "Snow-Bound" in 1866. Will Henry Thompson wrote "In the High Tide at Gettysburg". He commemorates Pickett's charge on the Union's center at Cemetery Hill on July 3, 1863, an assault that led to the near annihilation of his division.(3) Lloyd Mifflin wrote "The Battlefield" about Gettysburg. Walt Whitman wrote "Calvary Crossing a Ford", "Vigil Strange I kept on the field one night", and "The Wound-Dresser". He never served in the Civil War, but fascinated by the conflict, recorded in his notebooks thousands of observations that he developed into poems. He wrote about a poignant monologue memorializing a young, Unknown Soldier, dead on a battlefield; and he also wrote an intense autobiographical piece about his work with the wounded in the hospitals of Washington, D.C.(3) He paints a kind of poetic photograph capturing a moment in the life of a military unit; and he also wrote "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "Drum-Taps" in 1865. Emily Dickinson wrote "My Triumph Lasted Till the Drums" and "My Portion is Defeat Today". Dudley Randall wrote "Memorial Wreath". In 1862, the first black troops entered the Civil War; when the war ended in 1865, roughly ten percent of the Union Army was black; he memorializes theses soldiers. Allen Tate wrote "Ode to the Confederate Dead". Robert Lowell wrote "For the Union Dead". He was long fascinated by Union Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, an ancestor. On July 18, 1863, Shaw and his black regiment, the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry, suffered a terrible defeat while trying to overtake Fort Wagner on Morris Island near Charleston. A traditional Negro spiritual hymn was "Down by the Riverside," which was written by middle class white college students in 1865. It was the anthem of the anti-war movement from Isaiah, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."(4)

Another, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" on March 20, 1851; it was the most influential book, which many say had been written by God. There was an eruptive force of oppressive silence that hung over the whole question of slavery before she published her book.(6) It was kidnapped into slavery of the Negroes and the subsequent maltreatment of them, impracticability of slavery as a permanent institution. "I was as ready as any of them to pledge my life, fortune, and sacred honor for such a cause. To fight for my country, or to make some declaration on my own account. Every worthy person in the U.S. must desire to preserve the integrity of our unprecedented republic."(6) Negro slavery must disrupt and degrade this common ideal by tempting the North to the moral indifference, the half-deliberate ignorance, which encourages inhuman practices, and by weakening the character of the South through luxury and irresponsibility that the institution of slavery breeds; most closely akin to Dickens' "Oliver Twist."(6) "Uncle Tom" lowered threats, harassed persecutions, and impotence of well-meaning people, outbreaks of violence, sudden bereavements, and it helped in the passing of the Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850. She also wrote "The Pearl of Orr's Island" in 1862.

And still another was her husband, Calvin Stowe who wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." It inspired respect and sympathy in spite of his hypochondria. "The Origin and the History of the Books of the Bible" he wrote using homely examples to call in the prosaic and practical in order to prop the divine. He met with Harriet in Exeter Hall in London for an anti-American demonstration; he rose and answered a speaker with "she had the power of ending slavery at once: she had only to refuse to buy cotton that was cultivated and picked by slave labor. Are you willing to sacrifice one penny of your own profit for the sake of doing away with this accursed business? Has the cotton-consumer no conscience? The receiver is as guilty as the thief."(6)

Another still would be Francis Grierson also known as Jesse Shepherd wrote "The Union as Religious Mysticism" and "La Revolte Idealiste." Wilson refers to him as the supreme essayist of his age. "Modern Mysticism" was for spiritual nutriment, while "La Vie et les Hommes" in 1911 was sometimes witty, penetrating, and insipid. "Parisian Portraits" celebrated the banalities in prose and verse of certain aristocratic ladies in whose salons he had been asked to perform, when he used had been an exceptional pianist. The fact that he seems at that time to have felt an almost equal enthusiasm for Mallarme and Sully-Prudhomme shows how eagerly he had swallowed French culture.(6) His essays make a curious impression; they combine a very Scottish common sense with the aloofness of a disembodied spirit. He had lived in so many countries that his point of view was truly international; he undoubtedly enjoyed an advantage in being able to approach with a minimum of national prejudice.(6) Wilson thought he had a sound and bold perception of what was important and what wasn't; also that he was quite unusual in being able to appreciate that such statesmen should be judged as creative forces, like the artists. "The Valley of Shadows" in 1909 was a memoir of the Middle West on the eve of the Civil War, every word had a solid value and every detail sounds real. He was the cousin of that General Grierson who, with a single brigade of Western Calvary, men and boys whom Francis had known on the prairies, had brought off a spectacular coup in connection with the Vicksburg campaign. No other book so gives us the sense of imminence of the national crisis for which people dimly felt they were prepared without having been given the power to control it.(6) He also wrote "The Humor of the Underman" in 1911, "Abraham Lincoln, the Practical Mystic" in 1918, "Celtic Temperament" in 1901, "Hebraic Inspirations", "Practical Pessimism", "The Invincible Alliance" in 1913, "Psychophone Messages" in 1921, and "Illusions and Realities of the War" in 1918. He had a comprehensive view of the world and a touch of that practical shrewdness which he so much admired in Lincoln; but his realism that always stops short, his mystic glowing which don't quite reach intensity, make a less impressive showing here than in the field of the arts.(6)

Thirdly, the Civil War also inspired Hawthorne to write "The Marble Faun" and Emerson "Conduct of Life" in 1860.(1) A few more were Harriet Jacobs with "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", Rebecca Harding Davis "Life in the Iron Mills", and Longfellow "Paul Revere's Ride" in 1861. Still another was Rebecca Harding Davis with "Margret Howth" in 1862. Others were Louisa May Alcott with "Hospital Sketches", Longfellow "Tales of a Wayside Inn", Thoreau "Excursions", Hawthorne "Our Old Home", and Edward Everett Hale "The Man Without a Country" in 1863.(1) Still another was Locke with "The Naseby Papers" in 1864. Others still were Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", Louisa May Alcott's "Moods", and Julia C. Collins' "The Curse of Caste" and "The Slave Bride" in 1865.(1) More still were Emerson's "Terminus", and Mary Mapes Dodge's "Hans Brinker" and "The Silver Skates" in 1866.

There were also short stories by anonymous authors that deserve recognition. Two short stories on divided family loyalties are "On the Kentucky Border" and "In Charleston." "On the Kentucky Border", February 1, 1862; it's about loyal supporters of the Government who are and have been exceedingly troubled by Border State policy, if they are loyal let them support the Union at any cost; if they aren't the sooner we are rid of them the better. "In Charleston", written on December 14, 1861; it's about how a Southern woman's family is divided by secession sympathies. There is also even one short story about children, "Lula's Letter: A Child's Story", July 23, 1864; it's about a little girl who wishes to write a letter to a soldier, so her mother helps her and she receives a letter from a lonely soldier who has no family. Another short story about escapes, "Two Days with Mosby", January 21, 1865; it's about these guerrilla enterprises; which are only possible through the connivance of the inhabitants of the region where they take place, and these should be held accountable for all the damage done by their friends. If this rule is strictly enforced, the aide's and abettors of these marauding gangs will find that they're carrying on a losing business. There is also one short story on the Emancipation Proclamation, "A Letter from the Country", November 8, 1862; it states that the president has taken advantage of a rather impertinent and very injudicious letter addressed to him by Mr. Horace Greely, to state to the public his position on the slavery question. The president declares that his sole exclusive aim is to restore the Union, without reference to slavery, and that while he wouldn't hesitate to proclaim emancipation. If he were satisfied that would restore the Union, neither would he scruple to save the Union with slavery; so he has to sap the foundation of slavery, render it unprofitable and unsafe; and explode one by one all the delusions which induce the people of the South to cling to it, and slowly but surely without noisy proclamations or windy words clearing the way for a general emancipation of all the slaves on this continent. There are two short stories where blacks are principle characters, "The Devil's Frying Pan" and "Little Starlight." "The Devil's Frying Pan", May 7, 1864; it's based on the stain of the late riots on the history of the city of New York is indelible. No classes among us are and have been so foully treated as the black, yet none furnishes, in proportion, so few offenders against the laws.(2) Proverbially a mild, affectionate, and docile people, they have received from us, who claim to be a superior race, a treatment which of itself disproves our superiority.(2) "Little Starlight", October 29, 1864; before Grant moved everything that was heard from the Army of the Potomac revealed a unity, unselfishness, a hearty faith in the cause, a grave resolution to fight to the end, which prepared us for a campaign entirely unprecedented. The desperate contest upon the Rapidan, the shock of battle through two long summer days, shows upon both sides the qualities which will make the regenerated nation invincible. "We have the right to hope for a success which should bring every true American to his knees in religious gratitude, a success which will be a victory for the people of every country, and will mark the people of every country, and will mark an epoch in the advancement of civilization."(2) There is also one short story where women are principle characters, "Colonel Charley's Wife", October 8, 1864. "Now we women are as much interested in the war as you men. The Southern women, indeed, are said to be the main-stay of the rebellion, and the Northern women have been the chief solace and cure of our wounded soldiers. How they have worked in every way that women can, to help the great cause!"(2)

There are four notable short stories of battles, "Buried Alive", "Tippoo Saib", "The 14^th at Gettysburg", and "On the Antietam." "Buried Alive", May 7, 1864; it's about a black soldier who was at Fort Pillow describing the skirmish there; after a brave fight, the Union troops were overrun at the fort, and the Confederate soldiers began killing everyone in sight. "Tippoo Saib", April 2, 1864; side by side with our brothers and friends upon the soil of both the Carolinas, the colored men, to whom we had given no special cause to love us or to believe in us, fought for our Government and shared our victory. "The 14^th at Gettysburg", November 21, 1863; an army adjutant tells the story of how one small company captured six Confederate regimental flags. "On the Antietam", January 3, 1863; one boy gets the better of another in a street fight, and the loser runs off shouting threats. Years later, the winner and his friends, now young men, are all in the same regiment fighting in the Battle of Antietam; the young man who lost the fight years ago points a gun to the young man's head who had won, but ends up getting killed before he can shoot him. There are three short stories about the aspects of military life, "The Black-Eyed Smuggler", "In the Libey", and "The Scout's Narration." "The Black-Eyed Smuggler", May 14, 1864; an army soldier tells the story of his encounter with a female smuggler in Tennessee, a dark-eyed woman riding on a mule. She pulled out a pistol and demanded a horse, but he laughed and her and continued on his way; when he went back to find her later and arrested her, she was also suspected of spying. "In the Libey", February 20, 1864; there is no civilized nation in the world with which we could be at war which would suffer the prisoners in its hands to receive such treatment as our men get from the rebels; reason: that none of them are slave-holding nations, for nowhere are human life and human nature so cheap as among those who treat human beings like cattle.(2) "The Scout's Narration", January 9, 1864; a scout tells of his first scouting assignment. He was sent to determine from which way the Confederate army would attack, the scout was nearly undone when he met Confederate pickets; he fought fiercely and managed to escape and sent up the signal for the Union troops before their attack began.

Writers on both sides of the American Civil War brought to the crisis. Literature showed its unique ability to stir the emotions, to freeze the moment, to sweep the scene with a panoramic lens and suddenly swoop in for a close-up of suffering or courage. Grief, indignation, pride, courage, patriotic fervor, ultimately reconciliation and healing: the literature of the Civil War evoked unforgettable emotions that roiled America in its darkest hour.(5)

Bibliography

1. Campbell,D. "Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events 1860-1869." Last modified: June 15, 2005. Access Date: September 22, 2005. http://www.wsu.edu/-campbelld/amlit/1860.htm

2. Harper's Weekly. Black History Website. Website design 1998-1999 Harp Week, LLC. Access Date: September 26, 2005. http://www.civilwarliterature.com

3. Hedin, Robert and Cronkite, Walter. Old Glory: American War Poems from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terrorism. New York, NY: Persea Books, Inc., 2004.

4. Lear, Norman; Carter, Jimmy; Ford, Gerald R.; and Katz, Daniel R. Why Freedom Matters: The Spirit of the Declaration of Independence in Prose, Poetry, and Song from 1776 to the Present. New York, NY: Workman Publishing Company, Inc., 2003.

5. McClatchy, J.D. "Poets of the Civil War." 2003 Literary Classics of the U.S., Inc. Access Date: September 22, 2005. http://www.americanpoetsproject.org/volume/1931082766

6. Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New York, and Canada: First Noonday Printing, 1977.