Additional Online Texts
A complete list of all the additional primary sources found on this website.
Section 1 – Origins
Walt Whitman, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” (1861)
Walt Whitman, from Drum-Taps (1865), “Drum-Taps”
Alexander Stephens, the “Cornerstone” Speech (full text) (March 21, 1861)
Section 2 – Battlefields
Emily Dickinson, various poems (1860–1863)
George Moses Horton, from Naked Genius (1865):
– “The Dying Soldier’s Message”
– “Execution of Private Henry Anderson”
– “The Spectator of the Battle of Belmont”
– “The Terrors of War”
Walt Whitman, from Drum-Taps (1865), “Camps of Green”
Herman Melville, from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866):
– “Malvern Hill”
– “The Swamp Angel”
William T. Sherman, from Memoirs of General William T. Sherman (1875), Chapter 24: Conclusion – Military Lessons of the War
Sam R. Watkins, from Co. Aytch (1882)Chapter 8: “Chattanooga”
Walt Whitman, from Specimen Days (1882):
– “The Weather. – Does It Sympathize with These Times?”
– “Two Brothers, One South, One North”
Ulysses S. Grant, from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant (1885–1986), Chapter 67: Negotiations at Appomattox – Lee’s Surrender
Helen Hunt Jackson, from Sonnets and Lyrics (1886), “Songs of Battle”
Ambrose Bierce, from Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891):
– “A Horseman in the Sky”
– “A Son of the Gods”
Ambrose Bierce, from Can Such Things Be? (1893):
– “One of the Missing”
– “A Tough Tussle”
Ambrose Bierce, from Bits of Autobiography (1909), “On a Mountain”
Stephen Crane, from The Little Regiment (1896):
– “A Gray Sleeve”
– “A Mystery of Heroism”
Jack London, from The Night-Born (1913), “War”
Section 3 – African American Experience
Rebecca Harding Davis, “John Lamar” (1862)
Frederick Douglass, “The Mission of the War” (1863)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Emancipation Proclamation” (1862)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Boston Hymn” (1863)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Voluntaries” (1863)
George Moses Horton, from Naked Genius (1865), “The Slave”
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, from Army Life in a Black Regiment (1869), “Camp Diary”
Louisa May Alcott, from Hospital Sketches; and Camp and Fireside Stories (1869), “My Contraband”
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “Robert Gould Shaw” (1900)
Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (1902)
W. E. B. Du Bois, from Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Section 4 – The Home Front
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Chiefly about War Matters: By a Peaceable Man” (1862)
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, “The Bend” (1864)
Henry James, “The Story of a Year” (1865)
Harold Frederic, from Marsena, and Other Stories of the Wartime (1894), “The War Widow”
Section 5 – Reconstructing
John Wilkes Booth, letters and diary entries (1864–1865)
D. B. (Daniel Bedinger) Lucas, “In the Land Where We Were Dreaming” (1865)
Francis Miles Finch, “The Blue and the Gray” (1867)
Frederick Douglass, “Address at the Graves of the Unknown Dead” (1871)
Joel Chandler Harris, from Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings (1880), “A Story of the War” (1877)
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “Memorial Day” (1884)
Stephen Crane, from The Little Regiment (1896), “The Veteran”
Ambrose Bierce, from Antepenultimata (1912), “A Bivouac of the Dead” (1903)
Lizette Woodworth Reese, from Spicewood (1920), “A War Memory”
The Civil War in Song
Daniel Emmett, “Dixie’s Land” (1859, 1860)
Anonymous, “John Brown’s Body” (1859?)
Septimus Winner, “Abraham’s Daughter (Raw Recruits)” (1861)
A. E. Blackmar, “Allons Enfans (The Southern Marseillaise)” (1861)
William B. Bradbury, “Marching Along” (1861)
Ethel Lynn Beers, “All Quiet Along the Potomac” (1861)
Harry McCarthy, “The Bonnie Blue Flag” (1861)
Julia Ward Howe, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (1862)
Walter Kittredge, “Tenting on the Old Campground” (1862)
Charles Carroll Sawyer, “Weeping, Sad and Lonely” (1862)
Anonymous, “Parody on When this Cruel War is Over” (n.d.)
A. E. Blackmar, “Goober Peas” (1866)
M. B. Smith, “The Battle of Shiloh Hill” (1863)
Patrick S. Gilmore, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” (1863)
George F. Root, “Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! (The Prisoner’s Hope)” (1863)
George F. Root, “Just Before the Battle, Mother”
Henry C. Work, “Marching through Georgia” (1865)
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Negro Spirituals” (1867)