Uncle Tom's Army: Literature and the American Civil War

Instructor: Professor William H. Lane
                Department of English

Uncle Tom's Army will explore responses to slavery and the American Civil War in the work of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Ambrose Bierce, Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Commenting on the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Abraham Lincoln is reported to have described Stowe as the "little lady who started this big war." Frederick Douglass, a former slave, wrote powerfully of his own journey to freedom. Ambrose Bierce, the only major American writer to serve directly in the war, turned his experience as a soldier into compelling short stories that dramatize the absurdities and horrors of even a just war to preserve the Union. Walt Whitman, a journalist turned poet, served in his own way by visiting the wounded in Washington's crowded hospitals and wrote poems grounded in these experiences as well as a powerful elegy for Lincoln. Herman Melville, although slow at first to respond to the war, ended by creating in the last year or so of the conflict a book of poems remarkable for its intensity and thoroughness in documenting the course of the war.

Each of these writers brings a distinctive approach and temperament to the events of the 1850's and 1860's. By studying their work, students will gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of this important period of American history and a fuller sense of how it felt to live through the dramatic events of the time. Since the seminar is a writing-intensive course, students will be asked to write frequently in response to readings and class discussions and to take a series of research-based essays through an extensive process of revision. By participating in peer editing exercises, they can expect to become skillful editors of their own and other students' work. Because of its interdisciplinary nature and its emphasis on writing, the course should serve well as a gateway to further study in a variety of fields.