1. The Civil War Era and Its Aftermath: 1850-1890 Introduction to the Literary Period
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Fast Facts
Key Concept: Slavery Leads to War
Key Concept: Civil War Divides the Country
Key Concept: The Country Rebuilds
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2. The Civil War Era and Its Aftermath: 1850-1890 Fast Facts
Historical Highlights
The Civil War (1861–1865) results in the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers.
Slavery is formally abolished in 1865.
Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford’s Theatre, Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865.
Great advances in communication technology include the telephone (1876), phonograph (1877), and electric lightbulb (1879).

3. The Civil War Era and Its Aftermath: 1850-1860 Fast Facts
Literary Highlights
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) stirs abolitionists to protest the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
Frederick Douglass publishes a version of his autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), which helps fuel the antislavery cause.

4. The Civil War Era and Its Aftermath: 1850-1890 Fast Facts
Literary Highlights
Walt Whitman publishes his first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855.
Realism, a new literary movement, takes shape.
Emily Dickinson dies in 1886; her Poems are published in 1890.
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5. Key Concept: Slavery Leads to War
History of the Times
The South produced cash crops for export and depended on the North for financial, manufacturing, and commercial services.
The economy of the South relied on slave labor, but many Northerners viewed slaveholding as a violation of the American principle of equality.
The North tended to place more authority with the federal government, while the South championed states’ rights.

6. Key Concept: Slavery Leads to War
History of the Times
New states and territories were admitted to the Union around 1850.
Conflict worsened as supporters of slavery tried to create more slave states while abolitionists tried to keep slavery from spreading.

7. Key Concept: Slavery Leads to War
Literature of the Times
The personal accounts of people held in slavery exposed the horrors and injustices of slavery.
Narratives of fugitive slaves were a popular form of literature.

8. Key Concept: Civil War Divides the Country
History of the Times
Conflict erupted into war after Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina.
Many thought the war would end quickly; instead, it went on for four long, painful years.
The Union was preserved, but a fragile republic then had to find a future.

9. Key Concept: Civil War Divides the Country
Literature of the Times
Historical sources such as soldiers’ diaries and letters were the primary form of war literature.
Works of literary significance were rare because few major American writers experienced the war firsthand.

10. Key Concept: The Country Rebuilds
History of the Times
The South was devastated by the war and slow to recover.
In the North, industry continued, and advances were made in manufacturing, transportation, and communication.
Immigration from abroad resumed, and the nation’s population doubled between 1870 and 1890.

11. Key Concept: The Country Rebuilds
Literature of the Times
Letters and journals were inadequate to express the horrifying details of the Civil War.
The realistic novel was appropriate for handling such strong material, but it had not been fully developed in the United States.

12. Key Concept: The Country Rebuilds
Literature of the Times
The great novel of the Civil War was written decades later, by a man born six years after the war ended: Stephen Crane.
Crane’s realistic novel The Red Badge of Courage captures the sensations of an individual in battle conditions.