Civil War Humor

Introduction: Civil War Humor, a Paper War

[ 3 ] Introduction CIVIL WAR HUMOR, A PAPER WAR The war from 1861 to 1865 coincided and had much to do with furthering the modernization of an inexpensive print mass medium, a phenomenon of popular culture that would not be equaled for a century, when another war would do the same for the video medium. In each case, the medium responded to the interest in the war at the same time that it mediated that interest and co-modified it. In the North telegraphy meant that the latest news could be made available for eager and anxious consumers, while railroads delivered illustrations from the battle front. Of the war fever that infected non-combatants eager for information, “It is not a breathless courier who comes back with the report of the army we have lost sight of for a month, nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to know for a week of some great engagement,” Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in September 1861, “but almost hourly paragraphs, laden with truth or falsehood as the case may be, making us restless always for the last fact or rumor they are telling” (1891, 7). And not only news: advances in lithography and printing generally meant that the public appetite could be fed quickly and inexpensively in a wide variety of saleable forms. (Three days after the fall of Fort Sumter, for example, George Root had written and published the first war-related song.) Broadsides and song sheets, political cartoons, pictorial envelopes, trading cards, and comic valentines were printed in the thousands and sold, often literally, for pennies. Inexpensive too were book series, such as T. R. Dawley’s Camp and Fireside Library, Incidents of American Camp Life, Fun for the Camp, and Leslie’s Pictorial History of the War, as well as song books, board games, and paper dolls, all of it patriotic, but everything a salable commodity . Pointing to advertisements soon after war began for Union buttons with appropriate portraits, Union pins, badges, rosettes, chromo lithographs, and more, Alice Fahs writes, “It was possible to connect [ 4 ] INtRoduCtIoN “Pertinent Questions!” Courtesy of the library of Congress. INtRoduCtIoN [ 5 ] buying a wide range of goods with being loyal to the nation” (2001, 4). Some advertisements went further in anticipating modern merchandising in making only the most tenuous connection between the product and patriotism. No war rhetoric in “Pertinent Questions!”; the slightly built Confederate president and vice president (Alexander Stephens weighed in at less than a hundred pounds) are, ironically, potential customers for the restorative powers of M. Samstag’s “lifegiving , appetite provoking” cream ale and porter. The disadvantages of the Confederacy in this paper war were distinct and profound, as its partisans well knew. Before 1861, the South had relied on the North to supply not only much of the content but, more crucially, virtually all of the printing infrastructure, the physical necessities of printing. When the conflict began, there was only one Southern foundry (in Nashville) capable of forging type, no manufacturers of printing presses, few paper mills, and no means of making paper from wood pulp. In addition, the Union blockade of shipping early in the war created shortages of all kinds, and printing had to be done with ersatz ink; and, indeed, newspapers were printed on wallpaper, wrapping paper, and the backs of business forms. Qualified artisans were in short supply as well. “A well-illustrated magazine cannot yet be produced in the South,” the Southern Monthly (March 1862) admitted. “Good artists we can procure, but good engravers on wood are scarce among us,” and it went on to confess that “the wood itself is not be had.” (With no engraver capable of rendering the new, official Confederate seal, the work had to be done in Scotland.) Over time, with the great majority of battles taking place on Confederate soil, publishing centers were occupied by Union troops, and lines of communication were disrupted. Finally, the military draft in the Confederacy cut a wider swath than it did in the Union, creating a shortage of printers, illustrators, and editors. HumorandSongs In the paper war, music in the Confederacy “far outstripped every other area of Southern publishing during the war, expanding dramatically in response to popular demand,” Drew Gilpin Faust writes (1988, 18). Richard B. Harwell explains why: “Cheap to produce and requiring comparatively small investment in scarce supplies of paper, song sheets could be distributed more...