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My project examines the stances of the address to the nation in American Civil War poetry. As the first book-length study of this material, it considers the work of canonical male writers, unpublished soldier-poets, and women and African American poets who have often been overlooked. During the war years, Americans believed that poetry had a vital role to play in defining national identity. My project considers how poets created for themselves a platform from which they could address the nations of the Confederacy, the Union, and the United States. Ultimately I suggest that the war changed the way American poets addressed their audiences and that Civil War poetry changed the way Americans understood the construct of the nation.