ABSTRACT
The essential material of writing is language, and the essential material of war is violence, or what Walt Whitman called “the red business.” In wars between different nations or cultures, with different languages and histories, the dynamics of post-war interpretation do not have the same closed, impacted quality as they do after a civil war. Civil War writings had to be responsive to the pressures of the literary marketplace. Social values and expectations became business considerations, and business considerations in turn weighed on editorial and authorial decisions. The Civil War became many civil wars when refracted through the prism of literary style. Realism in the arts and literature was nurtured by a heightened demand for, and an increased supply of, information, and Civil War contributed to both. The political tensions involving race and region, federal power and states’ rights, modernity and tradition, continue to make themselves felt across the cultural landscape, from presidential campaigns to landscape conservation to civil rights.
