Welsh Writing from the American Civil War

Nearly ten thousand pages of writing in Welsh stemming from the American Civil War has survived—offering contemporary readers a surprising opportunity to look at the war from an entirely new perspective. In the first study of its kind, Jerry Hunter sifts through this huge archive of letters, diaries, poetry, and prose from soldiers, civilians, and professional writers to give a fascinating account of Welsh-American reactions to the war and its context. His examination of issues such as the Welsh community’s support for abolition and the war’s effects on notions of Welsh-American identity will captivate historians, literary scholars, and Civil War buffs alike.

Jerry Hunter is a senior lecturer in the Welsh department at the University of Wales, Bangor.

Prologue: Fredericksburg, 13 December 1862

Acknowledgements

The Scope of this Study

PART ONE: WELSH AMERICA ON THE EVE OF CIVIL WAR

1. The Bards and the Bowie Knife

2. Frederick Douglass’s ‘Welsh Friend’

PART TWO: WELSH AMERICA AND THE UNION WAR EFFORT: AN OVERVIEW

3. Sons of Columbia, Sons of Arthur: The Militarization of Welsh America and the Literature of Enlistment

4. ‘For Freedom, Union and Order’

5. ‘We, the Welsh of the Regiment’

6. The Moles Beneath Welsh America’s Political Landscape: Exceptions to the Union Rule

PART THREE: WRITING WAR, WRITING PEACE

7. Writing on the Home Front

8. Turing Pens into Swords: Soldiers’ Poetry

9. ‘Ink made from Gunpowder’: Prose of the Battlefield

PART FOUR: WRITING FREEDOM

10. Star over Washington: The Literature of Emancipation

11. Pulling down the Pillars: Recording the Service of African-American Soldiers

12. ‘Heroic Descendants of the Ancient Britons. . . Remember the Eighth of November!’: The Election of 1864

13. ‘The Ashes of Nations’: Endings and Beginnings

14. ‘Our Lincoln’