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An Apology For Confederate Poetry, Elizabeth J. Elliott '13

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

This paper explores the reasons why poetry written in the Confederate states during the Civil War is rarely included in the American literary canon. Historians and literary critics have dismissed Confederate poetry as nothing more than jingoistic and sentimental "trash in rhyme." Nevertheless, poems buried in the mountains of Southern literary magazines and journals from the period tell a more nuanced story. Covering a wide and fascinating range of subjects, both good and bad Confederate poems aptly reflected how the Southern popular mind reacted to and dealt with the events of the war.