ABSTRACT
Letter writing was a refi ned, even artistic, enterprise during the Civil War. Nineteenth-century epistolary practice employed a variety of techniques in order to access the imagination and emotion of the reader, drawing from narrative, poetry, fi ction, and even music for both content and style. Songs were often transmitted from person to person inside interpersonal correspondence. Scholars and historians frequently overlook these musical sources, which is unfortunate, as epistolary song is a uniquely informative genre. It is a form of literary sentimentalism that used Victorian epistolary practice and popular song to express a range of explicit and implicit ideas. Epistolary songs provide a lens through which to view the private and emotional lives of the correspondents as well as the cultural and social role of popular music during this turbulent time.
