From the
White House desk of President Abraham Lincoln to book shelves in homes across
America, the works of William Shakespeare were omnipresent during the Civil War.
1864 cartoon depicting George McClellan and Abraham Lincoln in a "Hamlet" scene
Lincoln
favored “Macbeth,” soldiers staged Shakespearean plays and people in North and
South used the bard’s writings to justify their cause and express their deepest
emotions at a time of great sacrifice and loss.
Now, a Massachusetts Historical Society fellowship is
helping a history professor conduct research for a book she’s writing about
reading habits and practices during the Civil War, particularly in regard to
the works of Shakespeare.
Dr. Sarah Gardner, distinguished professor of history at Mercer University in Macon, Ga.,
is the recipient of the Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship. The fellowship is
entitled “Shakespeare Fights the
American Civil War.”
She spent
part of the summer at the historical society, which specializes in Union war
efforts. Next June, she will travel to the Boston Athenaeum, which focuses on
the Confederate side and has print materials, including newspapers, journal
articles, books and poems.
Dr. Gardner has received more than 15 grants and fellowships (Mercer University)
“I became interested in Shakespeare because Shakespeare
was popular with the Civil War generation,” the cultural historian told the
Picket in an email. “He was evoked in speeches, he was popular on the lecture
circuit, his plays were performed by amateur and by professional actors,
allusions were deployed in magazines and in short and long fiction. I am
largely interested in the ways soldiers and people on the home front used
Shakespeare in their correspondence and diaries.”
Gardner, a cultural historian, has taught courses and written about the American South, the Civil War and Reconstruction. She gave three lectures in 2021 at Penn State University.
“Civil War-era Americans … turned to Shakespeare for
universal truths,” said a preview of the series. “Shakespeare, they
believed, spoke to abiding concerns, such as the soul of genius, the power
of the imagination, and of the heroic individual’s ability
to determine an event’s outcome.”
“I haven't
seen any meaningful difference between Unionists' and Confederates' uses of
Shakespeare. And they don't always cite Shakespeare to defend a cause,” Gardner
told the Picket.
Hamlet and
Macbeth were especially popular with Civil War Americans.
As Gardner
and other scholars point out, Shakespeare had a lot to say about war. Two lines
from “Richard II” and “Macbeth” on the
subject.
“He is come to open
The purple testament of bleeding war.”
And
“When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.”
“Macbeth” apparently
was Lincoln’s favorite. As an essay published on the National Endowment for the
Humanities website says, the president did not suffer the weight of guilt and
excesses as did Macbeth – who spoke of powerlessness.
“Instead, he got something far more abstract from Macbeth’s
famous soliloquy. Throughout his life, Lincoln was deeply attracted to the idea
of unchanging destiny, and used this ‘predestination’ mindset to help him
survive even the most traumatic of events. In many ways, he saw his
presidential legacy not as the result of well-ordered strategy and political
planning, but as the sheer result of some higher order of which he was merely
an often unwitting tool.”
One of the most-famous cartoons of the Civil War was the “Chicago
Nominee,” drawn by Justin H. Howard. It shows Union Gen. George McClellan, who
ran against Lincoln in 1864, depicted as Hamlet in the graveyard scene.
“Instead of the skull of court jester Yorick, McClellan addresses the
head of President Abraham Lincoln, his Republican opponent. Governor Horatio
Seymour of New York is cast as Hamlet’s friend Horatio, and the grave digger is
a famished Irish immigrant,” says a description of the cartoon by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“In 1862 Lincoln removed General McClellan, who had been in command of
the Union army, from active duty after he failed to achieve a decisive victory
at Antietam -- the bloodiest battle in American military history. The caption
at the bottom of the image alludes to false newspaper reports that Lincoln had
acted with inappropriate levity while touring the Civil War battlefield at
Antietam.
The caption borrows an Act IV line from “Hamlet”: “I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest. Where be your gibes
now?”
Frederick Douglass was another big fan of Shakespeare. After the war, he was at a dinner with Powhatan Beaty, an African-American Medal of Honor recipient who became an actor, notably playing Macbeth.
A Mercer University news release about the fellowship says Gardner is reading
letters, diaries and books to learn more what they read, much of which was from
Shakespeare. People often used the author’s words to describe their experiences
during the Civil War.
“I’m really
interested in how people think and how they make sense of the world,” the professor and author said
in the release. “The history of emotions allows us to enter a world removed
from us, either by time or place. Everyone experiences joy or pain, but they
experience them differently. We can better understand our historical actors by
appealing to the history of emotions.”
