The Imagined National Identity of The North and South During the Civil War, as Expressed Through War-Songs

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dc.contributor.authorValentonis, Alexander S.
dc.date.accessioned2021-08-23T13:46:52Z
dc.date.available2021-08-23T13:46:52Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.descriptionRecommended 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.
dc.description.abstractDuring 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.en_US
dc.identifier.citationValentonis, 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.
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.48497/ba1s-2r89
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11868/2118
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.publisherKeyhole Pressen_US
dc.subjectImagined communityen_US
dc.subjectCivil waren_US
dc.subjectWar songsen_US
dc.subjectNationalismen_US
dc.subjectNational identityen_US
dc.titleThe Imagined National Identity of The North and South During the Civil War, as Expressed Through War-Songsen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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Volume 5: Spring 2021