1861 - 1900
Causes for Civil War

A variety of economic, political, and
social differences between the North
and South. Slavery was the core reason
for the war.
 South needed a work force for exports
 South also needed the industrial North
 North regarded the Fed. Govt. as authority
 South championed states’ rights.
Civil War begins w/Conf. attack on
Fort Sumter

North

South
 Free Slaves
 States’ rights
 Preserve the
 Southern way of life
Constitutional Union
Historical Highlights
The C.W. results in the deaths of over
600,000
 Slavery abolished in 1865
 Lincoln assassinated on April 14, 1865
 Technology advanced with the invention
of the telephone(1876),
phonograph(1877), and the electric light
bulb (1879)

Literary Highlights
Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s
Cabin – motivates the Fugitive Slave Act
(1850)
 Frederick Douglass publishes his
autobiography (1855) – fuels the
antislavery cause
 Walt Whitman publishes his first edition
of Leaves of Grass in 1855

Literary Highlights
The literary movement of realism takes
shape
 Emily Dickinson dies in 1886 – her
poems are published after her death

Response to war

Idealism vs. Disillusionment
 What gave one writer optimism during this
time gave another author pessimism.
 Whitman found heroism and a strength in
the lives of the CW soldiers – witnessed the
war first hand
 Melville stripped human nature bare and
displayed humanity’s basic evil.
War experience

Few American writers experienced the
war firsthand.
 Emerson stayed in Concord “knitting

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

mittens”
Thoreau (for Abolition) died in 1862
Hawthorne died in 1864
Dickinson stayed in her attic in Amherst
Howell, James, and Adams were abroad
Realism
Dominated American fiction from the late
19th to the early 20th century.
 Realists sought to accurately portray
real life without filtering it through
personal feelings, romanticism, or
idealism.

New Generation of Writers
Subjects came from the slums of cities
 Factories replaced farmland
 Corrupt politicians
 Prostitutes

Roots of Realism – Europe
Found in the following writers

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Daniel Defoe
George Eliot
Anthony Trollope
Honore de Balzac
Stendhal

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Gustave Flaubert
Leo Tolstoy
Realistic Novel
The Red Badge of Courage was written
by a man who was born six years after
the Civil War ended. – Stephen Crane
 The American Romantics held an
aversion for Realism
 The Realist writers emerged after the
Civil War

The Realist Novel
Realism was used to explain why
ordinary people behave the way they do.
 Subject matter relied on emerging
sciences of human and animal behavior

 Biology
 Psychology
 Sociology
Realism = Regionalism

Regionalism was literature that
emphasized a specific geographical
setting and made use of the speech and
mannerisms of the people in that region.

Regionalism = Local Color
Regionalists
Sarah Orne Jewett – Maine
 Kate Chopin – Louisiana
 Harriet Beecher Stowe – New England
 Bret Harte – The West
 Mark Twain – Mississippi River Valley

Mark Twain is the best –known example as a
regional writer. He was first known as a
regional humorist and then evolved into a
writer of comic view of society with satiric
qualities.
 His best novel, Huck Finn, describes the
moral growth of a comic character. In an
environment that is at the same time
physically beautiful and morally repugnant.

Realism vs. Naturalism
An extension of realism.
 Naturalists relied heavily on psychology
and sociology – tended to dissect
human behavior.
 Influenced by Darwin’s theory of the
survival of the fittest
 Outstanding naturalists – Theodore
Dreiser, Stephen Crane, and Frank
Norris

Psychological Fiction
Henry James is considered America’s
greatest writer of this type of novel.
 Concentrated on the distinctions in
character motivation.
