2024-05-092024-05-092011-07Torsney, C. B. (2011). Zephaniah Swift Spalding: Constance Woolson’s Cipher. In K. Diffley (Ed.), Witness to Reconstruction: Constance Fenimore Woolson and the Post-Bellum South, 107-125. https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781617030253.001.00019781617030260http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/10175This chapter argues that in a number of Woolson’s early Civil War poems and stories, her affection for Zeph Spalding gets displaced onto the Confederate brigadier general John Hunt Morgan. In this guise among others, Zeph haunts Woolson’s writing throughout her career: in Anne (1880), Woolson’s first novel, as Captain Ward Heathcote; and in Horace Chase (1894), Woolson’s last novel, as the eponymous Yankee businessman. Throughout, Zeph functions as a cipher that reveals Woolson’s understanding of the Civil War and its aftermath, the economic expansion that followed, and the imperialist zeitgeist of nineteenth-century America.17 pagesengAll Rights Reserved (With permission of the publisher)Confederate brigadier generalJohn Hunt MorganCivil WarEconomic expansionImperialist zeitgeistText