Nineteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Frederic Loring’s novel, Two College Friends (1871), tells a story of Ned, a Harvard student who fights on the side of the Union in the Civil War. Taken prisoner by the Confederate army, Ned realizes that his college friend, Tom, has a high fever. Ned, therefore, asks a Confederate general, Stonewall Jackson, for mercy. The general agrees not to take him to the prison camp and to stay where they are under the condition not to escape. Ned breaks his promise, returning to the Union camp to leave Tom. Ned goes back to the Confederate side in order to be punished by death. The work has been considered as the first “gay novel” in the U.S. My focus, however, is on the historical background of Harvard students’ enlistment in the Union army. A historian Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai (2016) indicates that New England college students, who fought for the Union, were instilled with the idea that “rigid discipline and obedience to order” would lead to “honorable conduct.” Although Ned is one of the best examples in that he displays obedience to the Union, he also applies the same principle of conduct to his enemies. It is beyond comprehension that he is so obedient to the rules of the South that he is willing to sacrifice his own life. I interpret his loyalty and sacrifice to the Confederacy as an act of building a new community, bringing together two halves of a republic.