In the 1830s Northern abolitionists began to agitate for an end to slavery.

Former slaves who eloquently demanded an end to slavery: Frederick Douglass Sojourner Truth

Northern abolitionists set up the Underground Railroad to help slaves escape to the North and Canada.

Abraham Lincoln narrowly won the 1860 presidential election. By 1861 the Civil War had begun.

The Union won the Civil War, the most devastating war in American history, in The South was economically and Morally devastated.

By 1900, Southern states had enacted discriminatory regulations preventing African- Americans from exercising their right to vote.

The postwar North experienced an industrial boom that attracted a flood of new European immigrants seeking work in U.S. factories.

Late 1800s technological progress was spurred by: *completion of the transcontinental railroad *invention of the typewriter, the telephone, the light bulb

1841 – The first caravan of covered wagons brought pioneers across the Great Plains on the way to Oregon country.

Tribes of the Great Plains: *the Sioux *the Crow *the Pawnee Tribes of the Northwest: *the Nez Perce (most powerful)

By the mid-1800s life for all the Native Americans was doomed to change. *armed conflicts *signed treaties

Journalistic accounts of the Civil War established a taste for realistic writing. Rich subject matter for memorable poems, stories, histories, plays.

War literature produced by writers who had fought in the struggle *Ambrose Bierce and those who came after the war *Stephen Crane

Realism became an important literary movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Realism attempts to create in fiction a truthful imitation of ordinary life. It arose as a reaction against the sentimentality of most Romantic fiction.

The realist presented the everyday events of a particular time and place.

Local-color realists portrayed the dialects, dress, mannerisms, customs, character types, and landscapes of their regions with an eye for accurate detail.

The rapid growth of magazines provided a ready outlet for local- color writing.

Mark Twain *prominent early local-colorist *first popularity - “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” 1865 *masterpiece - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Other local-colorists: *Willa Cather – the Great Plains *Kate Chopin – the deep South *Mary Wilkins Freeman – New England

By the end of the nineteenth century, realism had replaced Romanticism as the dominant way of viewing human life.

Realists *not so optimistic as they watched the century draw to a close

Realists: not so certain that humans could improve their lives, only that humans would continue to try.