Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty

As a captain of the Twelfth Connecticut Volunteers, De Forest had seen action in the Civil War in Louisiana in 1862 and in the Shenendoah Valley campaign in 1864 before being discharged for health problems.Kellison, Kimberly R. "John William De Forest" in Encyclopedia of the Reconstruction Era, Zuczek, Richard (editor). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006: Vol. I, p. 191. {{ISBN|0-313-33075-1}} He published Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty in 1867 as a critique of slaveholding Southern society.

In contrast to much of the Civil War fiction that had gone before it, Miss Ravenel's Conversion portrayed war not in the chivalric, idealized manner of Walter Scott, but as a bloody and inglorious hell. Though William Dean Howells praised DeForest as a "realist before realism was named",{{citation needed|date=May 2012}} most critics{{Who|date=May 2012}} have argued that the Romantic elements of his plot mix poorly with the otherwise admirable realism of the battle scenes. The novel is often cited{{By whom|date=May 2012}} as a possible influence on Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, though the evidence that Crane had read the novel remains inconclusive.

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• [http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?idno=Wright2-0709%3C;view=header;c=wright2;sid=e0c96f541bd657bf0bbddbe749755bce;rgn=div1;cc=wright2;node=Wright2-0709%3A3 Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty] — full text on-line.

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Category:1867 American novels

Category:Novels set during the American Civil War

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