An Age of Transition

A Cultural Divide  Northern economy based on trade and industry; Southern based on agriculture and slavery  Slavery’s expansion west provoked confrontation

Slavery Divides the Nation  Henry David Thoreau (Walden) and Nathaniel Hawthorn (The Scarlet Letter) opposed each other over their support for abolitionists like John Brown, who led people on a bloody raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Conflict Reaches the Government  Politicians began fighting on the floor of the U.S. Senate over their support, or lack of support, for slavery.  Dred Scott argued that living in a free state with his owner had made him free. The Supreme Court ruled against him, saying that “even free blacks had no rights which a white man was bound to respect”.

The Civil War  Enraged at Lincoln’s pledge to stop the western spread of slavery, the Southern states seceded to form the Confederate States of America.  The Civil War ( ) ultimately claimed more lives (1,030,000) than in all other wars that the United States has ever fought.

Ideas of the Age: Freedom and Unity With Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, writing became more honest, unsentimental, and ironic. A new style, realism, would predominate in the years to come.

Literature of the Times  Writer Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Romantic) issued a challenge to America at the start of the Civil War.  In the coming decades, two poets would answer Emerson’s bold call: Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.

Brilliant Mavericks: Whitman and Dickinson  Whitman, big, bearded, and outspoken, was always in the thick of things and wrote many poems about current issues and events, from the sad plight of the slave to the shocking assassination of President Lincoln.

Brilliant Mavericks: Whitman and Dickinson  Dickinson, on the other hand, was shy and reclusive, living her whole life in her native New England, and finding inspiration for her poetry in her own thoughts.

Brilliant Mavericks: Whitman and Dickinson  Both poets wrote poetry so radical in form and content that it took many years for readers to appreciate it. In Dickinson’s case, appreciation didn’t come until after her death.

Brilliant Mavericks: Whitman and Dickinson  Whitman believed that the poetry of a young America could not be contained within traditional poetic forms. Instead, he wrote in free verse, unconfined by formal patterns of rhyme and meter. If it was part of American life, it was his to write about.

Brilliant Mavericks: Whitman and Dickinson  Dickinson’s poems were terse and compressed – a few brief lines packed with complex, original images. Her subject matter was intensely personal, and her themes of life included love, death, immortality, and nature.

Literature of the Civil War  Slave Narratives: revealed the true nature of slavery and made readers care.  Diaries and Letters: gave personal responses to historical events.  Public Documents: influenced a large audience.  Later Fiction: moved toward realism.