The Imagined National Identity of The North and South During the Civil War, as Expressed Through War-Songs
Date
2021
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Publisher
Keyhole Press
Abstract
During the American Civil War, a major means of communicating
national concepts was through song, due to its role as a form of popular
entertainment, combined with low literacy rates. And during the American
Civil War, war-songs in particular acted as important phenomena which
expressed and developed the national identities of the Union and Confederacy.
As the war progressed, the concepts in the war-songs developed alongside
the zeitgeist of the war, portraying the American experience during this
time by the soldiers in both the North and South. Because of this, war-songs
contributed to the development of the Confederate and Union national
identities during the Civil War. This essay seeks to understand this effect
and analyze the ways in which war-songs affected the early American nationalism.
Specifically, the popular war-songs of the beginning, middle, and
end of the Civil War are analyzed in this essay to understand how national
identity was developed and expressed through the medium of music. The
basis of this paper is formed in the idea that the creation of a nation comes
from how a social group forms an imagined community that is connected
across space and time by shared media and culture, as set forth in Benedict
Anderson’s book, Imagined Communities. While Anderson does not refer
to music specifically as a means of developing an imagined community, this
essay seeks to show how music played a major role in the establishment of
a national conception in America during the Civil War, one that has even
persisted to the modern day.
Description
Recommended Citation: Valentonis, Alexander S. “The Imagined National Identity of The North and South During the Civil War, as Expressed Through War-Songs.” Royal Road, 2021. https://doi.org/10.48497/BA1S-2R89.
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Keywords
Imagined community, Civil war, War songs, Nationalism, National identity
Citation
Valentonis, Alexander S. “The Imagined National Identity of The North and South During the Civil War, as Expressed Through War-Songs.” Royal Road, 2021. https://doi.org/10.48497/BA1S-2R89.