VI. Civil War and Gilded Age
1. 1. Authors and Works
The Boston Brahmins,
also known as the Boston Elite, were a group of aristocratic writers and
intellectuals in 19th-century Boston who played a significant role in shaping
American cultural and literary life. They hailed from old, wealthy New England
families of British Protestant origin and were deeply influential in the
development of American institutions, education, and the arts. The term
“Brahmin” was coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes, drawing from the Hindu caste
system, where Brahmins represent the priestly and intellectual class. In the
American context, the term came to denote the refined, educated, and socially
prominent elite of Boston. Members of this distinguished group included
prominent literary figures such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell
Lowell, William H. Prescott, and John Lothrop Motley. These individuals
contributed significantly to American literature and historical writing,
advocating for moral values, intellectual cultivation, and cultural refinement.
Their collective influence extended beyond literature into politics, academia,
and public life, helping to shape the ideals of the American literature. (High
59)
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 –
May 26, 1865) was an outstanding conflict in United States history, marking a
profound division between the industrial North and the agricultural,
slave-owning South. The war arose from deep-rooted tensions over slavery,
economic differences, and states' rights. As the North pushed toward a more
modern, industrial economy and a stance against the expansion of slavery, the
South sought to preserve its agrarian system and slave labor as central to its
way of life. The Civil War was not only a military confrontation but also a
moral and cultural turning point, resulting in the abolition of slavery, the
preservation of the Union, and a redefinition of American identity and
democracy. Its impact on literature, politics, race relations, and national
memory is highly remarkable.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the Gilded Age, which spanned the 1870s
and beyond, was a period marked by intense materialism, rapid
industrialization, and widespread political corruption in U.S. history. While
the era was characterized by economic growth and the rise of powerful
industrialists, it also revealed stark inequalities, labor exploitation, and
corporate greed hidden beneath a thin veneer of prosperity. Hence, the term
"gilded," suggesting a shiny surface covering underlying decay. In
response to these social and political issues, the period gave rise to a number
of important novels of social and political criticism. Writers such as Mark
Twain, who co-authored The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), used fiction to
critique the moral consequences of unchecked capitalism, wealth disparity, and
the decline of democratic ideals. Literature of this era often served as a
mirror to the nation’s contradictions, exposing the tensions between appearance
and reality, privilege and poverty, and ambition and integrity (Britannica).
The most famous authors are:
Walt Whitman emerged as a revolutionary voice
in American poetry, one who both fascinated and unsettled his contemporaries.
The Boston Brahmins, guardians of traditional literary values, disliked his
boldness and perceived vulgarity, seeing his unorthodox style and themes as a
challenge to their refined sensibilities. Yet Whitman was not simply a
provocateur. He embodied a new American spirit. As Ezra Pound famously
declared, “He is America”, capturing Whitman’s central place in the nation’s
cultural identity. Ralph Waldo
Emerson, who recognized Whitman’s genius early on, had prophesied the arrival
of an “American Homer” who would give voice to the barbarism and materialism of
the times, and he believed Whitman to be that figure.
With a pioneering vision, Whitman saw
himself as the poet with the courage to match the vastness and raw energy of
the American landscape, both physical and cultural. He invented a poetic form
based on radical experimentation, crafting a line that moved with the rhythm of
the individual voice, unbound by traditional meter or rhyme. His poetry,
especially Leaves of Grass, offered a democratic, inclusive, and
unapologetically physical vision of life, reshaping the future of American
literature. (High 70)
Many diverse influences shaped Walt
Whitman’s poetic form and distinctive free verse line. These ranged from Italian
opera to the repetitive, rhythmic structure of the King James Bible, both of
which informed the musicality and rhetorical power of his poetry. Whitman was
also inspired by the spatial vastness of astronomy, which paralleled his
expansive poetic vision, and by American landscape painting, which taught him
to appreciate and represent space in new, vivid ways. However, the most crucial
influence was Whitman’s profound sense of self and his belief in the
transformative power of poetry. For him, writing was not merely a technical
craft but a passionate act of identification with America itself, its land,
people, and democratic spirit. His masterwork, Leaves of Grass, reflects this
philosophy. More than a book, it was Whitman’s evolving life’s work, a living
document that grew and changed across multiple editions. He regarded it not as
a finished product but as a passageway to something greater, a continuous "work
in progress" that mirrored the dynamic, ever-unfolding identity of the
nation he sought to celebrate (High 72).
Walt Whitman rejected the rigid and polished
poetic forms of the 19th century, favoring instead a fluid, open, and
experimental style that better reflected the energy and diversity of American
life. This approach is powerfully demonstrated in one of his most famous poems,
"Song of Myself," where he begins with the line, “I celebrate myself,
and sing myself.” In this
declaration, Whitman sets the tone for a poetic vision centered on the self not
in isolation, but as a starting point for broader identification with others.
As the poem unfolds, the "self" expands to embrace not only personal
experience but also friends, the American people, and eventually all of
humanity. Whitman's inclusive philosophy is further emphasized when he
proclaims, “I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul,” asserting
his commitment to honoring both the physical and spiritual dimensions of
existence. His poetry, like the democratic ideals he championed, celebrates the
individual while affirming universal human connection.
Through Walt Whitman, American poets found the
courage to break free from traditional English literary forms and conventions.
Whitman believed that American poetry needed to reflect the unique spirit of
the nation and its democratic ideals, declaring that “the time had come to
reflect all themes and things, old and new, in the lights thrown on them by the
advent of America and democracy.” For Whitman, the message always took
precedence over form. He was a literary pioneer, the first major poet to fully
explore the possibilities of free verse, crafting poems that rejected rigid
meter and rhyme in favor of a plain, direct style that mirrored the rhythms of
natural speech. Avoiding the
ornate and decorative language typical of his time, he instead used bold
imagery and unadorned diction to speak to and for the common people. A
committed supporter of the North during the Civil War, Whitman saw his poetry
as a national voice, one that could unite, heal, and inspire in times of
profound change. (High 72-73)
Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly was the most
influential and widely read American book of the 19th century. First published
in serial form in the National Era magazine between 1851 and 1852, the novel
was an immediate success, capturing the nation’s attention with its vivid
portrayal of the horrors of slavery and its emotional appeal to readers’ moral
conscience. Its impact was so profound that it not only shaped public opinion
but also heightened tensions leading up to the American Civil War. Stowe’s work
became a cultural and political force, earning her recognition even from
President Abraham Lincoln, who is famously reported to have greeted her with
the words, “So you’re the little woman who made the book that made the great
war.” This anecdote underscores
the novel’s immense influence and its role in stirring the anti-slavery
movement in the United States.
Uncle
Tom’s Cabin played a pivotal role in strengthening the anti-slavery movement in
the North, helping to expand the campaign against Southern slavery and
ultimately contributing to the tensions that led to the Civil War. While the
novel had a powerful political effect, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s original
intention was not to attack the South or its people. In fact, Stowe had visited
the South, found many southerners to be warm and gracious, and depicted several
Southern characters sympathetically in her novel. Her focus was on the moral
evils of the institution of slavery itself. By combining emotional storytelling
with a compelling moral message, Stowe was able to reach a wide audience and
stimulate public debate on one of the most divisive issues in American history.
(High 74)
Emily Dickinson was another remarkable New
England woman writer during the Civil War era, though her poetry stands in
sharp contrast to the nationalistic or politically engaged works of her
contemporaries. Her poems contain no direct references to the war or to any
major historical events of her time. Instead, Dickinson turned inward,
exploring timeless and deeply personal themes most notably, death, a subject
that recurs frequently in her work and can be traced back to her Calvinist
upbringing, which emphasized mortality and the afterlife. Her perspective often
feels both intimate and existential, as if she is encountering the world
"for the first and last time," capturing fleeting moments of insight
with startling clarity. Through her condensed style and language, Dickinson
carved out a unique poetic voice that transcended the public concerns of her
age, offering instead a profound meditation on life, death, and the mysteries
of consciousness.
Emily Dickinson made the “search for
faith” one of the central themes of her poetic exploration. While the Bible
served as a foundational text in her spiritual and intellectual development,
she also drew significant influence from the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson,
whose transcendental ideas shaped her view of the self, nature, and the divine.
Because of this influence, many critics and scholars have classified Dickinson
as a Transcendentalist, though her work often engages in a more skeptical and
questioning tone than that of her contemporaries. Around the early 1860s,
however, a shift began to emerge in her poetry. Her writing started to reflect
a growing preoccupation with pain, suffering, and the limitations of human
experience, themes that conveyed a deeper struggle with existential doubt and
emotional isolation. This blend of spiritual inquiry and psychological
intensity gives Dickinson’s poetry its enduring complexity. These are examples
of her poetry:
‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’.
I’m Nobody! Who
are you?
Are you – Nobody –
too?
Then there’s a
pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
‘I felt a Funeral,
in my Brain’.
I felt a Funeral,
in my Brain,
And Mourners to
and fro
Kept treading –
treading – till it seemed
That Sense was
breaking through
Sarah
Orne Jewett was a key figure in the development of “local color” literature, a
genre that emerged in the late 19th century with the aim of capturing the
distinctive qualities of specific American regions. Her work focused on
depicting the customs, dialects, landscapes, and everyday life of rural New
England, particularly the coastal communities of Maine. Local color writing
like Jewett’s sought to preserve the unique character of regional life during a
time of rapid national change and growing urbanization. Through her
observational style and richly detailed settings, Jewett helped establish local
color as a respected literary movement that emphasized authenticity and the
cultural richness of America's diverse locales (High 80).
- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Mark Twain stands as one of the defining
literary voices of the Gilded Age. His works reflect both the humor and
contradictions of this era. The Innocents Abroad (1869) is a satirical
travelogue that critiques American and European cultural pretensions,
showcasing Twain’s early mastery of irony and observation. In The Gilded Age
(1873), co-written with Charles Dudley Warner, Twain gave the period its
enduring name while highlighting the greed and corruption of post-Civil War
America. His novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) offers a nostalgic yet good
portrayal of childhood in a pre-industrial America, while The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1884) moves into deeper territory, confronting issues of
race, freedom, and moral hypocrisy through the journey of its young protagonist
down the Mississippi River. Collectively, these works not only reflect Twain’s
literary brilliance but also serve as a mirror to the tensions and
transformations of American society during the Gilded Age.