Brother against Brother

Brother Against Brother is one of Oliver Optic’s many novels for boys in his Civil War series. The brother against brother phrase was one of the standard descriptions of the Civil War as a conflict that divided American families along sectional lines, with the literal cases of brothers fighting on opposite sides of the war providing some of the most emotionally weighted material in the wider American Civil War literature. Optic uses the framework for the kind of family separation and reunion plot that nineteenth century Civil War fiction worked through.

Oliver Optic produced military fiction set in the Civil War across multiple novels and connected series. The standard pro Union framing of his Civil War fiction reflects the publisher market and the wider American cultural context of the post war decades.

For scholars of nineteenth century American children’s literature, of how the Civil War was translated into adventure fiction for the young, or of the wider career of Oliver Optic, the Civil War series is essential. Many of his books are now in the public domain.