Civil War Morale-Building:
Songs and Pictorial Envelopes

PATRICIA DE GEORGES

A STUTE men have always recognized the power of perstia-
/j\ sion in achieving their ends. Propaganda is especially use-
A )\ f ul during war time when people must be persuaded that
they are sacrificing their comforts and often their lives in a just
cause. Rarely was this task so difficult as in the U.S. Civil War,
which set men against their neighbors. Methods of inducing one
American to fight another were many. Both sides indulged in vi¬
tuperative, partisan propaganda campaigns. The northern efforts
were more extensive, primarily because the Union had the money
to sustain them. In view of this fact, my observations here deal
with the North. On a .simple yet most effective level, patriotic
feelings were stirred by war songs and picrorial envelopes and
WTiting paper, all of which are amply represented in the Columbia
Libraries' Department of Special Collections.

How often have men marched ro war rhrilling to rousing mili¬
tary music only to be disillusioned by reality. \\ at music, synon¬
ymous with glory and greatness, is a potent incentive to young
men to plunge into an experience which, in fact, has little glory
and but a shabby greatness. The disparity between the feel¬
ings evoked by patriotic music and the harshness of combat is
poignantly expressed in a letter from Private E. M. Kelley of
Company B, i ith Regiment, Rhode Island A'olunteers, dated i8
October 1862:

It is now 10 minutes past five P.M.The sun in all its hcautv is sinking to
rest in the western heavens; the inspiring strains of martial music, from
the izythPcnsylvania, the 133d, New York, the 22d, Connecticut, and
the eleventh R.I. Regiments, composing our brigade, w^ho are at this
time on dress-parade, is not onl\- of itself a bcautifull [sicl scene,

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