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Folk Lore and the Civil War
Civil War Folklore
Folklorists have given rather little attention to the folklore
of the Civil War, probably because the paradigms underlying the study of folklore
in the United States generally have been ahistorical ones, with emphasis placed
on collecting contemporary folklore and upon emphasizing the folklore of contemporary
groups such as ethnic groups. Of course folklore collecting projects sometimes
have garnered oral traditions relating to the War (for example, legends recounting
events during or stemming from the conflict), but these seldom if ever have
been singled out for special attention. Even Richard M. Dorson, the scholar
who in some ways dominated American folklore studies in the 1960s and who was
by academic training a historian and much interested in the relationship between
folklore and history, had little to say about the Civil War. Indeed, in his
"A Theory for American Folklore" (Journal of American Folklore 72 [1959]: 197-215)
, in which he attempts to set out the great historical forces that have shaped
American folklore, he does not list any American wars as having been of significance
in this regard (though he mentions the many anecdotes and legends about Abraham
Lincoln as indicative of the importance of "Patriotism and Democracy" in influencing
American folklore).
This is not to say that folklorists have published nothing about
the folklore of the War, and one can refer to studies and collections that do
relate to it. For example, G. Malcolm Laws provides notable information on the
ballads (narrative folksongs) that tell the stories of various Civil War battles,
such as "The Battle of Shiloh" and "The Cumberland," in his index to American
ballads, Native American Balladry (rev. ed.; Philadelphia: American Folklore
Society Publications, Bibliographical and Special Series, No. 1, 1964). The
recently-published Encyclopedia of American Folklore, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand
(New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996) includes a "Civil War" entry
(by Rory P. B. Turner, pp. 145-147), which discusses in rather general terms
the musical traditions generated by the War, oral narratives, the African-American
Juneteenth celebrations that stem from the end of the War, and Civil War reunions
and reenactments. An article on "The Civil War Songster of a Monroe County Farmer"
(New York Folklore Quarterly 27 [1971]: 163-230) provides a personal collection
of songs recorded 1862-64 including some Civil War songs but also suggesting
the knowledge of songs had by a typical individual in this period. Irwin Silber's
Songs of the Civil War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) of course
provides a wide selection of texts, though of many different kinds of songs,
not only folksongs. (There are other collections of Civil War songs, but this
is the most scholarly.)
One folklore journal, the New York Folklore Quarterly, did publish
two issues with special sections devoted to "Civil War Lore" (vol. 17, nos.
1 & 2 [1961]). These sections include an article on folksongs ("Three Civil
War Songs," by Frank Warner, pp. 90-95; Warner also produced an LP, Songs of
the Civil War, Prestige-International 13012), and one recounting two legends
relating to the War ("Two Tales from the Hudson Valley," by Pauline Hammell,
pp. 32-36), one a family narrative about a premonition, the other concerning
events at the Battle of Gettysburg. Unfortunately some of the articles in these
issues are problematic from the perspective of folklore scholars because the
New York Folklore Quarterly construed the subject matter of "folklore" very,
very broadly, including under the heading articles on what most folklorists
today would consider not folklore at all but other aspects of social and local
history and description. For example, the "Civil War Lore" issues include an
article based on the Civil War naval exploits of one author's ancestor based
on his diary.
There is also Benjamin Botkin's book, A Civil War Treasury of
Tales, Legends and Folklore (New York: Random House, 1960). Botkin, however,
has been a difficult figure for other folklorists to come to terms with, so
that his work has been widely ignored. Originally an academic, Botkin became
a highly successful anthologist whose Treasury of American Folklore (New York:
Crown Publishers, 1944) was in particular widely sold and read, going through
a number of printings and editions. The book was, however, strongly criticized
by Richard Dorson, who accused Botkin of producing not a collection of folklore
texts but a mishmash of literary and historical texts whose relationship to
folklore varied considerably and included the most superficial and sentimental
possibilities. Whatever the justice of Dorson's criticism, professional folklorists,
who increasingly emphasized the primacy of field-collected folklore texts and
ethnographic approaches, increasingly distanced themselves from Botkin and have
generally paid little attention to most of his books as source material.
The Civil War Treasury is similar to his other anthologies in
consisting of excerpts from a wide variety of mostly published material written
by both obscure figures and well known (among the latter, Benjamin Butler, Mary
Boykin Chesnut, and Ambrose Bierce). Some of the excerpts clearly report folklore
texts (such as a song sung by liberated slaves about how their masters were
now the runaways; pp. 56-57), stories that obviously were making the rounds
of the camps (Bierce reports one about a soldier killed by cannon-shot that
literally had his name on it; pp. 50-51), and customs (such as a system of ritualized
forfeits when officers in camp inadvertently mentioned some unobtainable luxury;
pp. 67-68). Many others, however, are more accounts of historical sidelights,
such as an account of how General McClellan respected a property once owned
by George Washington (pp. 81-82). Indeed, Botkin seems to have intended compiling
a sort of documentary social history of the War which included folklore texts
and observations of customary folklore but much else as well. But the book is
worth further attention from folklorists who certainly could examine the excerpts
for a more unified conception of the oral traditions and folk customs of the
War context. (Obviously, there were no folklorists or anthropologists collecting
folklore during the War, so that any knowledge of what folklore was being transmitted
must be drawn from written sources. Botkin's book could be a useful starting
point for any survey of what the letters and journals and diaries and memoirs
of the War period suggest were the tales and songs and rituals of the time.
Indeed, Dorson undertook just such a survey of colonial America in his book
American Folklore [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959].) Contemporary
folklorists are interested in matters of identity and how folklore supports
ethnic or national or regional senses of personal identity. The importance of
the War and the folklore of the War in shaping Southern identity is certainly
an issue folklorists might pursue.
Of course if one includes the existence and history of slavery
as integral to a consideration of the Civil War, there is a large body of African-American
folklore which has been published and is of relevance. Most of it was collected
after the War (indeed, the first significant collection was one of slave songs
made by Northerners who had come south to educate the freedmen; this was William
Francis Allen, Francis Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of
the United States (New York: A. Simpson, 1867), but much of it nonetheless reflects
a vision of ante-bellum slave life. One could argue that this folklore is very
important historical documentation of slavery, given that the slaves did not
generally record their own reactions to their experiences in writing, having
to resort to oral means of expression. The John and Old Master stories, for
example, which feature the attempts of a slave and his master to outwit each
other, clearly are indicative of plantation social relations and slave attitudes.
Miles Mark Fisher argued in Negro Slave Songs in the United States (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1953) that slave songs very precisely track changes
in slavery, likely an overstatement of the case but one which did call the attention
of historians to folk materials. More recent historians looking at slave life
have seen the value of folklore as a source--Lawrence Levine in Black Culture
and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), and Sterling Stuckey,
in "Through the Prism of Folklore: The Black Ethos in Slavery," Massachusetts
Review 9 (1968): 417-437 for example.
--Frank
de Caro
The American Folklore Society
web site includes links to numerous other folklore-related web sites.
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