The debate over the justice and necessity of the American Civil War is reflected not only in the volumes of the scholars but in the minds of some of our important poets. Most kept insisting on what was for them a prior conviction, a kind of recognition, which can only lead to a condition of bathos. For example, William Cullen Bryant boasted of the heroic farmers-turned-soldiers in his rather jingoistic poem “Our Country’s Call”:
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Our country calls; away! away!
To where the blood-stream blots the green…
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Strike, for that broad and goodly land,
Blow after blow, till men shall see
That Might and Right move hand in hand,
And glorious must their triumph be!
These lines were written by a man who was handy with a pen rather
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