The Imagined Civil War: Popular Literature of the North and South, 1861-1865

This book brings out the significance of popular culture during war. Aside from the soldiers who fought in both armies, and the politicians who attempted to build their respective nations, the true meaning of the Civil War came from those on the home front. It was these "citizens," of both the North and South, who through war-related literature such as books, newspapers, poems, magazines, and pamphlets, challenged the ideological pose of war. This "imagined war" was meant to bring inspiration or to put events or certain characters into context. Fahs focuses primarily on the contributions from female writers who composed numerous short stories, poetry, music, letters, and novels in the war. Literature from men is not excluded as the author brings in the influences of Walt Whitman, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others who contributed mightily to the written aspects of the war. Few military and political materials are presented in this work, and the author generally excludes much of the religious substance found in antebellum literature. Though Fahs incorporates several avenues of African American writings, no publications devoted to emancipation are included in this book. The depictions of blacks during the war's first two years in the widely known Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie's was meant as humor but portrayed as degrading. However, after Lincoln's Emancipation these images gave way to illustrations of black manhood and heroism, a point made clear in The Imagined Civil War as "tentative and halting."(13) It emphasized that even though this war represented "black freedom," blacks were still seen as the lesser race, and this further exemplifies the constant changes of the popular images of African Americans. Southern literature remained committed to portraying blacks as satisfied with slavery. This would turn later from a role of subordination to a celebration of Southern heritage that was clearly fictional from the beginning. Not surprisingly, Fahs fails to incorporate much literature written by blacks (especially from females), as not much material was printed during the war. As seen Margaret Creighton's Colors of Courage, remembrance of the soldiers who fought and died for "black freedom" took preference over these people of color in the memory of the war. Another recurring theme presented is the importance of gender in Civil War literature. Interestingly enough, northern depictions of a mother's emotional sacrifice as the same as men's heroism gave rise to women as "active heroines"-though gender differences still existed. Fahs does illustrate the South as less willing to incorporate women into its literature, because most there failed to see women outside of the home. These portrayals further demonstrate that during wartime women were generally perceived in a different light, but would soon fall back into their domesticated settings once the men returned home. Also, the changing face of nationalism in Civil War publicat