History & Cognition: Is there a more un-Confederate book in the 1800s than Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables? And yet we are told that Confederate prisoners in Union prison camps gave themselves nicknames like “Gavroche” and “Cosette”. We are told that Confederate soldiers in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia—the same soldiers who rounded up free Blacks in Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg campaign and sold them south as slaves—called themselves “Lee’s Miserables”:

Victor Hugo: “Preface to Les Misérables”: ‘So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use… -Victor Hugo, HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862… <archive.org/details/les…>

And:

W.B. Houghton & M.B. Houghton: Two Boys in the Civil War & After: ‘After Lee's army had recoiled from the rock-bound heights of Gettysburg, and, cumbered with its wounded, had slowly made its way… we went into camp behind the Rappahannock, near Chancellorsville… where we remained… resting and recruiting…. Camp duties were light, and especial pains were taken to feed us well. I remember well that we took special pride in a dinner our mess gave one day, in which the principal dish was a pot of forty-two apple dumplings, served with sauce made of butter, sugar, and apple brandy. It was a red letter day for us, and the fortunate guests were looked upon as pampered epicures. The sutler's stores supplied playing cards, books of all kinds began to circulate, and we took our ease under the shade of the forest, played whist and euchre or read Macaria, Les Miserables, or Scott's novels, or slept, or dreamed away existence, not knowing what hour might call us to face danger again… <antietaminstitute.org/h…>

And:

David T. Dixon: “Les Misérables, the American Civil War, & Violent Revolution”: ‘Most Confederate soldiers were reading editions of Les Misérables published in the South that conveniently excised passages lionizing John Brown or promoting abolition and purposely mistranslated the French word esclavage for “slavery” as “degeneracy.”Thus, rebel soldiers could imagine themselves taking the moral high ground as real-life heroes, fighting for independence against the cruel despot Lincoln… <emergingcivilwar.com/20…>

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References:

• Dixon, David T. 2023. “Les Misérables, the American Civil War, & Violent Revolution”. Emerging Civil War, August 20. <emergingcivilwar.com/20…>.

• Houghton, W. R., & M. B. Houghton. 1912. Two Boys in the Civil War & After. Montgomery, AL: Paragon Press. <archive.org/details/two…

• Hugo, Victor. 1862. Les Misérables. Brussels: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven. <archive.org/details/les…>.