6 - Families in the Civil War

Summary

Ambrose Bierce’s short story, “Horseman in the Sky,” is an archetypal piece of short fiction out of the late nineteenth century: crisply written, with a quirky plot twist, and a rather dismal take on human nature. But it is also the perfect representation of the cliché that the Civil War tore families apart. The brother against brother metaphor – or, in Bierce’s case, the father against son – has long been a favorite of historians and commentators; it works because, in fact, the war did divide families politically. Abraham Lincoln’s Todd in-laws are only the most famous family riven by war. Most of these divisions did not result in a Unionist son shooting his Confederate father (the denouement of Bierce’s unlikely story), but the power of the metaphor nevertheless provides a useful starting point for a discussion of families during the Civil War.