Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T22:03:21.642Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Remembering civil war

from BECOMING MULTICULTURAL: CULTURE, ECONOMY, AND THE NOVEL, 1860–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Sacvan Bercovitch
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Get access

Summary

The civil war initiated a publishing industry. The war between the Northern Union and the Southern Confederacy inspired chronicles – photographic, historical, journalistic, and literary – at a rate unmatched by previous wars. As one soldier noted of his appetite for “cheap literature … I, certainly, never read so many such before or since.” Dime novels written for soldier audiences and run in series such as “Dawley's Camp and Fireside Library” and Redpath's “Books for the Camp Fires,” sold in the hundred thousands. More conventional novels such as Metta Victor's The Unionist's Daughter (1862); Charles Alexander's Pauline of the Potomac (1862); John Trowbridge's The Drummer Boy (1863); Edward Willett's The Vicksburg Spy (1864); and Sarah Edmonds's Unsexed: or, The Female Soldier (1864) provided those at home and at war on both sides with a steady stream of courageous soldiers, wartime courtships, and cross-dressed spies. Newspapers and magazines featured dramatic war testimonials, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.'s account (Atlantic Monthly) of his frantic search for Oliver Jr. (the future Supreme Court Justice), who was wounded at Antietam. Editors like Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune, Horace Greeley of the New YorkTribune, and Henry J. Raymond of the New York Times, assumed the role of elder statesmen, as they reviewed military and diplomatic strategies, while one Alabama editor warned those corresponding with soldiers to avoid news “that will embitter their thoughts or swerve them from the path of duty.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Remembering civil war
  • Edited by Sacvan Bercovitch, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: The Cambridge History of American Literature
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521301077.015
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Remembering civil war
  • Edited by Sacvan Bercovitch, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: The Cambridge History of American Literature
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521301077.015
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Remembering civil war
  • Edited by Sacvan Bercovitch, Harvard University, Massachusetts
  • Book: The Cambridge History of American Literature
  • Online publication: 28 March 2008
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521301077.015
Available formats
×