Civil War Literature and Poetry
Discover stories and poems from the Civil War era.
CW Lit & Poetry
In the mid-1800s, American Romanticism and an emerging Realism began to shape the literature and poetry wrought by the approaching Civil War and the war itself. Writers North and South grappled with national and regional identities, moral conscience, and the anguish and awe of the battlefield. Works mourned the dead, extolled honor and sacrifice.
Northern Writers
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Frederick Douglass
Herman Melville
Northern writers dramatized the cruelty of slavery that stirred abolitionist sentiment and celebrated the resilience of the Union with reflections of sacrifice and national healing.
Southern Writers
Henry Timrod
Paul Hamilton Hayne
John Esten Cooke
Margaret Junkin Preston
James Ryder Randall
Southern Civil War-era writers and poets produced patriotic works honoring and justifying the Confederacy and its fallen soldiers, which later shaped the “Lost Cause” narrative.
Sources: California Learning Resource Center, Poetry in America, ushistorytimeline.com, Encyclopedia Virginia – “Popular Literature during the Civil War”, Wikipedia – “Southern United States Literature”, Synonym – “Southern Art & Poetry From the Civil War”
The Portent
Herman Melville
(1819-1891)
Hanging from the beam,
Slowly swaying (such the law),
Gaunt the shadow on your green,
Shenandoah!
The cut is on the crown
(Lo, John Brown),
And the stabs shall heal no more.
Hidden in the cap
Is the anguish none can draw;
So your future veils its face,
Shenandoah!
But the streaming beard is shown
(Weird John Brown),
The meteor of the war.
“John Brown Meeting the Slave Mother and Her Child on the Steps of Charlestown Jail on His Way to Execution.”
Louis Ranson
James Ryder Randall
(1839-1908)
Maryland, Oh Maryland!
The despot's heel is on thy shore, Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore Maryland! My Maryland!
Hark to an exiled son's appeal, Maryland!
My mother State! To thee I kneel, Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Thou wilt not cower in the dust, Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland!
Remember Carroll's sacred trust,
Remember Howard's warlike thrust,-
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Come! 'tis the red dawn of the day, Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array, Maryland!
With Ringgold's spirit for the fray,
With Watson's blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Come! For thy shield is bright and strong, Maryland!
Come! For thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland!
Come to thine own anointed throng,
Stalking with Liberty along,
And sing thy dauntless slogan song,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Dear Mother! Burst the tyrant's chain, Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain, Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
"Sic semper!" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back amain,
Maryland! My Maryland!
I see the blush upon thy cheek, Maryland!
For thou wast ever bravely meek, Maryland!
But lo! There surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek-
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll, Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control, Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll,
Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland! My Maryland!
I hear the distant thunder-hum, Maryland!
The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! She burns! She'll come! She'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!
Walt Whitman
(1819-1892 )
An Army Corps on the March
With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,
With now the sound of a single shot snapping like a whip,
and now an irregular volley,
The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades
press on,
Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun – the dust-cover’d men,
In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,
With artillery interspers’d – the wheels rumble,
the horses sweat,
As the army corps advances.
The Blue and the Gray (1867)
Frances Miles Finch
(1827-1907)
By the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the Judgement Day:
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray.
The Riders by the River Road (4 stanzas)
John Esten Cooke
The bugle on the hillside
Cries faintly through the pines,
A ghostly, silver summons
That stirs the broken lines
Of men who rode at twilight
Along the river’s signs.
I see them in the gloaming—
The troopers, lean and proud,
Their sabers catching embers
Of sunset’s dying cloud;
They pass like fading thunder
That once was fierce and loud.
The river keeps their secret,
Its waters dark and deep;
It murmurs of the bivouacs
Where weary horses sleep,
And of the whispered watchwords
The sentries used to keep.
No more their flags are streaming,
No more their chargers rear;
Yet still the land grows solemn
Whenever they draw near—
For memory rides beside them
And will not disappear.
Selected Civil War Poems
War Poetry Anthologies & Collections
Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879)
by James Reid Lambdin
Northwood: Life North and South, Sarah J. Hale.
The Sketch Book: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories, Washington Irving.
The Prairie: The Pioneers, James Fenimore Cooper.
Walden: Henry David Thoreau.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs.
Will Newlon’s Poem
Uncle Sam's Mule*
By a played out warrior of the 3rd Iowa
In a muddy ditch by a deep morass,
A government mule lay breathing his last.
With harness all geared, and waiting for death -
The grim driver's summons to pull his last breath...
Will Newlon's original "Uncle Sam's Mule" is in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum. It is secure there and available for viewing and research.
For a donation of $25 to GreensBlue&Gray, I'll send you a PDF copy of the complete "A Civil War Narrative", including “Uncle Sam’s Mule” (200 pages, 12.5 MB). Be sure to email me your address.
If you are an educator with an .edu address, I'll send it to you at no cost. Thanks!
Chris
