During the Civil War thousands of poems in support of African American troops were published in newspapers across the nation. Now Elizabeth Lorang, a research assistant professor at the University of Nebraska and Rebecca Weir a supervisor in American literature at the University of Cambridge in England, have assembled a large number of these poems and published them in Scholarly Writing, an online journal. The poems in the collection were published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard and The Anglo-African. Both newspapers were published in New York City.
Here is an example of a poem published in The Anglo-American on May 9, 1863:
The Black Volunteers
We welcome, we welcome, our brave volunteers,
Fling your caps to the breeze, boys, and give them three cheers;
They have proven their valor by many a scar,
But their God-like endurance has been nobler by far.
The entire collection may be viewed here.
