1. 1
In 1863, the Lincolns received word that Benjamin Hardin Helm, a Confederate general
had been killed. Soon thereafter, his widow was traveling to Washington D.C. His widow,
Emilie Todd Helm, was Mary Lincoln's younger sister and she was coming to comfort the
Lincolns after the death of their son Willie and to be comforted by them after the death of her
husband. However, many Union citizens saw this as a betrayal as their leader was housing and
comforting an enemy. One visitor mocked the Helm's army to his widow's face and then
criticized Mary Lincoln for not allowing her son to fight in the war when she tried to ease the
conversation. When a friend reported the incident to Lincoln, he “[slapped] his hand against a
nearby table” and declared “You should not have that rebel in your house!”1
These criticisms
were hard on the Lincolns as they were being forced to choose between family and country.
However, the Lincolns were not the only ones to watch their family divided by the Civil War.
Throughout the border states especially, hundreds of families were divided on the issues
surrounding the Civil War. It was not uncommon for these divisions to result in brothers
fighting in opposing armies- some even meeting on the battlefield. Various forms of media at
the time used the stories of these divided brothers to personify the Civil War for their audience.
The way these brothers were portrayed changed as the Civil War went on as the popular views of
the Civil War changed. The media was able to use these brothers for these purposes because
these relationships were strong and something valued in this society.
Some historians have pointed out that brotherly confrontation was a common thing in the
latter part of the nineteenth century. Wrestling, debating, and other conflicts were a natural part
1 Stephen Berry, House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided by War (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2007), 154-155.

2. 2
of male progression. In his book, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the old South,
Bertram Wyatt-Brown wrote that these confrontations created “long-standing male friendships of
an intense, fraternal kind.”2
This kind of relationship made it possible for the media to use these
brothers to portray certain aspects of the war. The relationships and the nature of the conflict
were similar enough to what civilians saw everyday that the producers of this media were able to
really have their message make an impact.
Perhaps because of this relationship Amy Murrell Taylor argues in her book, The Divided
Family in Civil War America, that brothers divided by the Civil War had a unique problem with
the way they “managed their personal relationships amid the stresses of war.” If other family
members disagreed, such as a husband and wife or a parent and child, they were generally able to
keep their disagreement withing the walls of their home. However, most of these brothers no
longer lived at home, having grown up and moved onto land of their own. As a result, these
disagreements were not contained to the home but were carried out in correspondence, papers,
and the battlefield- occasionally putting their relationship and struggles out into the media.
These disagreements could contain a lively debate on the issues softened with occasional
reminders of brotherly love or could become so intense that correspondence was discontinued
because the brothers could not understand how the other could not respect the view that the
soldier was willing to lay down his life for. 3
There were several different reasons for these disagreements about Civil War issues
2 Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1982) 165.
3 Amy Murrell Taylor, The Divided Family in Civil War America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2005), 64, 67.

3. 3
between brothers. By definition, the civilians of a border state during the Civil War had several
different opinions about slavery and states' rights. As a result, it made it easy for brothers living
in these states to be exposed to a variety of ways of thinking. According to Taylor, some of the
younger men disagreed with their fathers as a form of rebellion while others disagreed because
they interpreted their duty differently. For example, many of the families living in the border
states owned slaves. Many of the young men who left to fight for the Confederacy viewed it as a
protection of their way of life. They knew that if the Union won, slavery would no longer be
allowed in their state. However, their fathers simply saw it as a betrayal of their county.4
The
fathers had watched the government struggle about the slavery issue for years and trusted the
government to figure it out.
However, the average Civil War volunteer was no longer living at home. Some men
moved from the North to the South to make a living or vice versa and became integrated into the
society and came to see things from the point of view popular in their new home or at least form
a loyalty to their new region. As a result, they found themselves at odds with their family when
the war broke out. One such man was Melvin Dwinnell. Having moved from his childhood
home Vermont to Georgia some time before, Dwinnell fully embraced the Southern cause and
enlisted in the army. He put great effort into smuggling his letters across enemy lines to his
Yankee family as he constantly begged for letters from them and asked to be notified if one of
his brothers went into war, as he had seen “several Brothers... [meet] in the opposing armies”
and wanted to be prepared. Dwinnell proved that the war had not destroyed his family ties.
However, he wrote that “if I should meet any of my relatives on the battlefield in Lincoln's army
4 Taylor, The Divided Family,” 15, 25.

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they will be considered as my enemies and treated as such. My whole heart is with the South.”5
In letters to his “dear brother” Albert, he discussed his disagreements with him, with statements
like “Albert, I wish you could go through the South, wherever your army went, see the
destruction, hear of all the sufferings... It is enough to make the blood of Angels boil.”6
In these
families in which one man was on an opposing side of the war to the rest of his family, his
conviction had to be strong. Although it was not likely to happen, there was a possibility that he
could meet a brother on the opposing side during a battle and have to choose what he was going
to do. Some brothers protected each other to a certain extent while others shot each other. It was
a complex decision that had to be made quickly- family or country? Some brothers never saw
each other during the war and other brothers faced each other in multiple battles. No matter the
odds, it was a possibility that these brothers needed to work out.
The roots of these familial disagreements were very similar to the ones that the country
was facing as it was hurtling towards civil war. The southern states believed that they should
have more power to determine what laws governed their state, much like some of the young,
rebellious sons felt that they should be able to make their own decisions and wanted out from
under the rules of their father. The Union and the Confederacy had different views on how the
southern states should deal with the slave culture that was abundant there, much as fathers and
sons that owned slaves had disagreements about which side of the argument would best represent
their best interests. Finally, the argument was largely territorial, strongly linked with the societal
5 Virginia Griffen Bailey, “Letters of Melvin Dwinnell, Yakee Rebel” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 47, no. 2
(June 1963): 199.
6 Bailey, “Letters of Melvin Dwinnell,” 201. Emphasis added.

5. 5
culture in the different areas. The brothers would get caught up in the areas that they were in.
As it became obvious that the family was a smaller type of bigger issues, the media began to take
interest in this trend.
Before the war and in the first year thereof, the newspapers viewed brothers set against
each other as a show of loyalty. In the September 2, 1859 edition of the Vincennes Western Sun,
a Unionist paper published in Vincennes, Indiana, a short story entitled “A House Divided” was
published telling of a disagreement between the Frankfort commonwealth and the Louisville
Journal. The Western Sun stated that “this is a family quarrel.”7
Although this most likely was
not a case of actual family members disputing, this use of family quarrel to sensationalize a story
gives the modern reader a glimpse into how the newspaper was using divided families at this
time. Disputes and gossip brought readers, as did the emotions that typically accompanied such
events. Early newspapers printed letters submitted by family members in an effort to capture the
nature of the war. In the Louisville Daily Journal, a Unionist paper published in Louisville,
Kentucky, a weekly series was published called “Letters of a Father,” a series of letters written
by Union fathers to their sons on the Rebel side. In the first letter, the father explains that “one
of the painful incidents of the present unhappy condition of our country is the estrangement
between members of the same family.”8
At this time, the war had not been going long and each
side was still convinced that they would easily win the war. The public was still very
enthusiastic about the war and each side was trying to convince the other that they were right. In
other newspapers, a brother might submit a series of letters between himself and his brother in
7 “A House Divided,” Vincennes Western Sun , September 2, 1859.
8 “Letters of a Father no. 1” Louisville Daily Journal, September 9, 1861.

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which they debate points of the issues behind the war. John Pratt, in an effort to inform Boston
readers about conditions and feelings in border states, published a few letters between himself
and his brother, Jabez, in the Boston Daily Journal. While the Journal and its readers enjoyed
this glimpse into familial strife that the war was leading to, it is safe to say that Jabez Pratt did
not enjoy his personal letter being shown to the public, calling it a “dishonor and private
treason.”9
However, as the war went on, the general population began to lose their enthusiasm for
the war. In her article about Civil War literature, Alice Fahs states that “by 1862, and then in
increasing numbers as battle deaths mounted... literature... stressed the subordination of
individuals interests to the needs of country.”10
Newspapers were no exception. Titles like
“Terrible Fratricide,” “Melancholy Affair,” “Brother against Brother” and “Brother's Blood”
started appearing with frequency in newspapers from Louisville to New York. In an effort to
keep their readers in touch with the events of the war, newspapers would ask soldiers to submit
records of recent events. According to Seth Shapiro and Lee Humphreys, “these diaries and
letters are often better and more accurate accounts of soldier life and warring activities than
reminiscences and personal tales.”11
When brothers faced each other, the meeting was often
recorded in these letters. One man reported that “the war brings strange events to pass” and
proceeds to describe how he had met a Union soldier who had been captured by his brother's
9 Taylor, The Divided Family, 69-70.
10 Alice Fahs, “The Sentimental Soldier in Popular Civil War Literature, 1861-65”Civil War History 46, no. 2
(June 2000): 108.
11 Seth Shapiro and Lee Humphreys, “Exploring Old and New Media: Comparing Military Blogs to Civil War
Letters” New Media & Society 15, no. 7 (2013): 1155.

7. 7
company and “for the first time in many months, [received] tidings of his misguided relative.”12
Another account tells of a lieutenant who “heard his name called by a wounded rebel, and
turning found his own brother... dying from the effects of a gunshot wound in the head.” The
writer records that the lieutenant “tarried with his brother a moment, dropped a tear for mother's
sake and hurried off to rejoin his command.”13
These descriptions of brotherly meetings no
longer praised the conflict between them but instead started to focus on the emotions behind
them- the joy of hearing from each other again or the sorrow of finding them wounded. One
letter recorded the irony of “an incident of war” in which two brothers owned four ships. One
brother donated two to the South while the other two were donated to the North by the other
brother. During the war, the northern ships were captured by “the Southern privateers” while the
southern ships were captured by the Union.14
During stories like this, ironies such as this
portrayed how much the common citizen was becoming disillusioned with the war. No longer
were the newspapers printing statements between brothers of who was more right or bragging of
the shortness of the war.
After the end of the Civil War in 1865, the country began to make efforts to heal itself.
Many historians have argued that this healing focused mainly on healing families and the country
and neglected the newly emancipated African American population. Whether this is the case or
not, we do know that there was a great emphasis on this aspect of healing. War tends to define a
decade, especially one that devastated a country so completely. In the years following the war,
12 “Old Battery, Stono River, S.C., June 4 1862” New York Herald.
13 “Headquarters First Division Missouri State Guard, Camp Springhill, Oct. 11, 1861,” The New York Herald.
14 “An Incident of War,” The Richmond Enquirer.

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collections of Civil War stories, poems, and songs began to be collected. These collections were
used to be a reminder of the horrors of the Civil War that both sides suffered as well as a way of
healing the country through shared experiences. Walt Whitman submitted his wartime journal
for publishing and later to the Library of Congress. In the book, he records his experiences as a
Civil War nurse including the story of a set of brothers he met in the hospital on May 28th
and
29th
of 1863: “One was strong Unionist, the other Secesh; both fought on their respective sides,
both were wounded, and both brought together after absence of four years. Each died for his
cause.”15
Following in the path of the newspaper stories from the latter stages of the war, stories
such as these focused on the tragedies that the war caused. In this account, as was the case in
most of these stories, both brothers died serving the side they thought was right. This aspect of
brothers being separated and then brought together moments before death often served to show
the suffering that happened on both sides of the war. Rather than focusing on which side won
the war, the authors focused the heartbreak and loss that came to these families. These accounts
represented the tragedy that caused the country to divide and so many lives to be lost.
Starting as early as the 1870s, anthologies were published regarding wartime literature.
Some were greatly romanticized as one tale that was written by “a writer in Philadelphia” that
involved a brother finding he had killed his little brother during a charge and becoming a
“hopeless maniac” and dying in an asylum.16
In her article about the role of the sentimental
soldier in Civil War literature, Fahs writes that literature in this time period often included
15 Whitman, Walt, Walt Whitman's Memoranda During the War, Death of Abraham Lincoln ed. Roy Prentice
Basler (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1962) 165.
16 “Brother Against Brother” in Anecdotes, Poetry, etc., of the War ed. Frank Moore (New York: The Arundel,
1882) 132.

9. 9
“deathbed scenes in which a character's impending death had a powerful impact on the lives of
witnesses.”17
Literary scenes between brothers divided by war were no different, whether these
“witnesses” that were changed could be a brother, a passer-by, or a mother.
Many of these poems and stories focused these mothers in an effort to promote healing
and the reuniting a country. The mother was someone who loved both of these soldiers and saw
the qualities in both boys, whether she agreed with their politics or not. One poem told of a
mother who “prayed for both as mothers pray/ For the one in blue and the one in gray... Each did
the right as right he knew/ What more could saints or angels do?”18
Another mother is reminded
of her two boys who fought and had “gone to the land where gray and blue/ Merge in tint of
celestial light” and tells her small child that “the blue and gray are the colors of God/ they are
seen in the sky at even/ And many a noble, gallant soul/ Has found them passports to heaven.”19
These poems are starkly different from the early Civil War letters published in the newspapers
that painted the divided family as the ultimate illustration of dedication to one's cause. Now,
both sides were credited for their bravery and instead of the sons being emphasized in their hard
fought battles to stay loyal to what they felt was right, it focuses on their mothers who loved
them both and saw them as doing what they felt was right for them.
The family was something that everyone in the country could relate to, on both sides.
17 Fahs, “The Sentimental Soldier,” 110.
18 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, “Two Brothers” in Under Both Flags: a panorama of the great Civil War as
represented in story, anecdote, adventure, and the romance of reality ed. George M. Vickers (Chicago: National
Book Concern, 1896) 138.
19 Brace, Charles S.,“How Blue and Gray Blend” in Under Both Flags: a panorama of the great Civil War as
represented in story, anecdote, adventure, and the romance of reality ed.George M. Vickers (Chicago: National
Book Concern, 1896) 437.

10. 10
Not everyone came from a typical family but the readers of this literature would at least be
familiar with what a family was and the stereotypical emotions that were found therein. The
media was aware of this and used it to their own advantage. It was not like the complicated
battle plans that required a map and concentration to understand. The stories of divided families
made it easy for the large issues and disagreements to be made straightforward and familiar, not
to mention that they lent themselves perfectly to the sentimentality that was so popular at the
time. However, behind these stories were real families that faced these problems. The families
really did care about each other and the whole conflict was hard on them.
At the beginning of the war, the media seemed to reduce the conflict between family and
conviction to a simple idea that one brother was right and the other wrong or a harmless debate
that provided entertainment for the readers. However, as the times changed, the country yearned
for healing and, as a result, started writing in a way that reflected how hard the war was in an
attempt to learn from it and see each other as equal once more. Naturally, some of these stories
were greatly dramatized and made the world appear to be simpler than it really was.
Reconstruction was difficult and took decades to work out- some might even argue it took a
century. However, these stories of divided brothers stuck a cord with the audience and were
perpetuated to remind the country of the tragedy of a civil war. Even today, there are often
examples of divided families demonstrated, whether it be in a History Channel presentation, a
book, or a play to give the audience an idea of just how much turmoil and division existed in a
country at war with itself.

11. 11
Bibliography
Bailey,Virginia Griffen. “Letters of Melvin Dwinnell, Yakee Rebel.” The Georgia Historical
Quarterly 47, no. 2 (June 1963): 193-203.
Berry, Stephen. House of Abraham: Lincoln and the Todds, a Family Divided by War. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.
Brace, Charles S.“How Blue and Gray Blend.” In Under Both Flags: a Panorama of the Great
Civil War as Represented in Story, Anecdote, Adventure, and the Romance of Reality,
edited by George M. Vickers, 437. Chicago: National Book Concern, 1896.
“Brother Against Brother.” In Anecdotes, Poetry, etc., of the War edited by Frank Moore, 132.
New York: The Arundel, 1882.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. “Two Brothers.” In Under Both Flags: a panorama of the great Civil
War as Represented in Story, Anecdote, Adventure, and the Romance of Reality, edited by
George M. Vickers, 138. Chicago: National Book Concern, 1896.
Fahs, Alice. “The Sentimental Soldier in Popular Civil War Literature, 1861-65.” Civil War
History 46, no. 2 (June 2000): 107-131.
Shapiro, Seth and Lee Humphreys. “Exploring Old and New Media: Comparing Military Blogs
to Civil War Letters.” New Media & Society, 15, no. 7 (2013): 1151- 1167.
Taylor, Amy Murrell. The Divided Family in Civil War America. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2005.
Whitman, Walt. Walt Whitman's Memoranda During the War, Death of Abraham Lincoln.

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Edited by Roy Prentice Basler. Bloomington,: Indiana University Press, 1962.
Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics and behavior in the Old South. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1982.