As the young United States spiraled toward its worst domestic crisis — the Civil War — its men of letters were fighting for their position on the world cultural stage. This battle, thankfully with no expense of human life, was unequivocally successful. Lovers of literature and students of American cultural history look back to this troubling time and find the genius of Melville, Dickinson, Thoreau, Emerson, Poe, Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne (to name a few) shining through the dark clouds of slavery and Civil War.
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