Covering “Our Boys”: Introducing the Heroic Soldier in the Civil War Press, 1861–1862

This chapter examines newspaper coverage of Civil War soldiers, North and South, during the first year of the war, April 1861 through April 1862. It demonstrates that both Northern and Southern editors recognized a duty to tell the individual soldier's story even while reporting on the war was often sweeping and impersonal. Thus, early reporting on the soldiers demonstrated rhetorical practices that would continue throughout the war: an interest of the press to deliver personal and proximal news to hometown readers; a recurrent affirmation of the soldiers’ connections with their home communities; and, especially in absence, the emergence of heroic archetypes, framing the soldier as an “everyman” hero set off on an epic mission.