4 - “The Home and the Camp So Inseparable”

Summary

One of the primary functions of war-time print culture was to bring the home to the front and the front to the home, thereby connecting soldiers with the loved ones they had left behind and bolstering the war effort in both places. On the pages of newspapers that circulated in army camps and in northern cities and towns, the campfire and the fireside were paired emblems of the Union cause. As a hallmark of antebellum conceptions of family and home, the fireside served as inspiration for mobilization and military endeavor. In turn, the campfire—a utilitarian necessity of army life—provided a substitute fireside for the soldiers gathered around it, connecting them to distant homes and uniting them in a shared cause. As flexible symbols, the campfire and the fireside blurred racial and gendered boundaries, equating the work of women at home with the efforts of soldiers at the front and providing a place of communion for Black and white soldiers.