Understanding the Effects of American Literature on the Civil War Era

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This Investigation seeks to explore to what extent literature impacted social disorder during the antebellum years of the Civil war? To evaluate the extent to which American literature provoked social disorder before Civil War, this investigation maintains focus on the effects of popular works such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Remus, and other famous publications on the general public. The effects of literature on certain social groups, such as political parties, are also considered throughout the investigation. The effects of literature written during the post-war years to the American Civil War will not be considered even if directly about the war, rather this investigation only assesses the effects of works written in the eve of the war that had significance in shaping the war.
Though the bookshelf of Civil War fiction is often greatly ignored, many of these titles were incredibly influential in their time (Moss 21). The literature of the Civil War was preoccupied with promise and danger, often stirring the minds of would be abolitionists and separatists into full-fledged ones (Lamb 240). One of the most influential works during pre-Civil War times was Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. This collection of folklore was just about the first major step towards understanding of slave culture (Moss 397). As important as Uncle Remus was, likely the most significant book in influencing the oncoming Civil War was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This was the most immediately influential work that has ever appeared in the United States, having sold over 305,000 copies in America only a year after publication in 1852 (Wilson 3). Harriet Beecher Stowe made documents such as the Compromise of...

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...lden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Print.
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Moss, Joyce and George Wilson. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” In Literature and its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Induced Them.” Detroit: Gale 1997
Nelson, Scott Reynolds., and Carol Sheriff. A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in America's Civil War, 1854-1877. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print.
Simpson, Lewis P. "Library of Southern Literature: Civil War in Literature." Library of Southern Literature: Civil War in Literature. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2014.
Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic Gore; Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War. New York: Oxford UP, 1962. Print.

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