The Early Spirit of War
The Early Spirit of War
This chapter describes popular war literature at the start of the Civil War. It was widely assumed that poetry and song had an important patriotic role to play in the war. Numerous writers produced poetry that asserted the communicative power of poetry in wartime. They wrote verse intended to inspire their compatriots to enlist in the war and composed “national songs” intended to be new symbols of nationality. Both Northern and Southern poets sought to imagine a unified nationhood into being across such boundaries as occupation, class, and geography, and public verse as a persuasive means of creating not just a local but a widespread, all-encompassing community.
Keywords: Civil War, popular literature, war literature, poems, poetry, song
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