Copperhead Gore: Benjamin Wood's Fort Lafayette and Civil War America

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin has often been cited for its galvanizing effect on anti-slavery opposition in the years before the American Civil War. Southern sympathizers in the North (known as Copperheads) never came close to producing anything that matched its influence. One of the more interesting attempts was Fort Lafayette; or, Love and Secession (1862). The novel—which features liberal doses of love and lust, intrigue and violence, loyalty and death—is by no means great li...