Humor and the Civil War: Comedy from America's Darkest Hours

President Abraham Lincoln said he wouldn't have been able to survive the Civil War without his jokes and amusing stories. That war was by far the greatest struggle the United States has ever faced. More Americans died in the Civil War than in all of the other wars combined. Americans--both Union and Confederate--endured very difficult times and suffered terrible tragedies, and yet they maintained their sense of humor. They even printed jokes on the front page of newspapers, mixed in with th...