The Civil War – Realism - Naturalism

________________________________Photographs from the American Memory Collection

Library of Congress

How did the conflict over slavery increase tensions between the

North and the South?

Whitehall Street Auction and Slave Sales

•Fugitive Slave Act (1850) required all citizens to help catch runaway slaves. This act rekindles slavery controversy.

•Voices in North declare slavery barbaric

•South sees antislavery movement as threat to economy

•Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel vividly depicting the cruelty of slavery became a powerful antislavery weapon and adds to the tension

•Abolitionist, John Brown, attempts to start a slave revolt

•Lincoln and the Republicans were elected and dedicated to fighting slavery. As a result, South Carolina and six other states seceded from the union.

Certificate of Freedom for forty-two year-old Harriet

Bolling, freed by James Bolling in 1842.

Poster for runaway slaves.

$200 reward for husband, wife, and 3 children

Abraham Lincoln Union President

Jefferson DavisConfederate President

General Ulysses S. Grant Union Leader

General Robert E. LeeConfederate Leader

When did the Civil War begin?

•The first guns were fired on April 12, 1861.

•South Carolina opened fire on a U.S. fort in Charleston harbor.

•After Fort Sumter fell, President Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to put down the rebellion.

•The Civil War had begun.

Charleston, S.C., Fort Sumter, from the sand-bar

•Families were divided

•Friends found themselves facing each other on the battlefield

•Four of Lincoln’s brothers-in-law served the Confederate cause

Were women allowed to serve during the Civil War?

Women in doorway of office of U.S. Christian Commission, Washington, D.C.

•Only men could enlist as soldiers.

•Women had to disguise as men in order to serve.

•An estimated 400 women fought in the war disguised as men.

•Other women used various disguises and risked their lives to spy for the cause.

•18,200 women were employed in Union hospitals as matrons, nurses laundresses, and cooks.

•The Confederates employed 3,300 women in similar roles.

Rose O’Neal Greenhow, Confederate spy, was imprisoned in Washington’s Old Capitol building.

Nurses and officers

Walt Whitman’s Hospital Notebook

Barn converted to hospital for wounded at Antietam

Were there African American regiments in the Civil War?

•The first black regiment recruited in the North was the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers.

•By the end of the war, 1 out of every 8 Union soldiers was African American.

•About 200,000 African Americans served in the Union army; 37,000 died

•Slaves who fled to Union lines were called “contrabands”.

ChristianFleetwood

Recipient of theCongressionalMedal of Honor

Company E

How many were killed during the United States Civil War?

Dead soldiers in a wheat field, Gettysburg, PA

•One out of every five soldiers was killed in battle or died in camp.

•There were more Americans killed in the Civil War than in World War I or World War II combined.

•At least 600,000 lives were lost.

Soldiers’ Cemetery, Alexandria, VA

Graves of Confederate soldiers, Richmond, VA

When did the war end?

•April 9, 1865 Lee surrenders to Grant. The war is over.

•Five days later, on April 14, 1865, President Lincoln is assassinated.

•Known as the Great Emancipator, Lincoln is the last great casualty of the war.

What were the results of the Civil War?

•Tragic loss of life

•Paid economic price, especially the South

•Bitterness between North & South

•Changed the way of waging war

•End of Slavery

•Preservation of the Union

POST-CIVIL WAR: WESTWARD MOVEMENT

Homestead Act of 1862 promised 160 acres of land to anyone who would farm it for five years.

• half a million farmers, including tens of thousands of emancipated African-Americans, staked claims on the Great Plains.

POST-CIVIL WAR: WESTWARD MOVEMENT

•Miners went west by the thousands, lured by the prospect of striking it rich in gold.

•Others moved west to become cattle ranchers.

POST-CIVIL WAR: WESTWARD MOVEMENT

•Expansion was boosted by the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1868.

• the railroad replaced the covered wagon, the symbol of the American pioneer.

POST-CIVIL WAR: WESTWARD MOVEMENT

By 1890, the frontier as Americans had known it for centuries had ceased to exist (“the disappearing frontier”).

Gone were• herds of buffalo• open range• Indian nations

POST-CIVIL WAR: INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

• Began with introduction of electricity (1880’s)

• Many inventions began to appear:o the electric lighto the telephoneo the automobileo motion pictures/movieso the phonograph

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION – LIFESTYLE CHANGES

• skyscrapers

• department stores

• mass transportation

Problems appeared as well.• noise• traffic jams• air pollution• crime• slums

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION – SOCIAL CHANGES

• disparity between wealthy and poor• wages of workers were so low that one, or even two,

could not support a family.• child labor was the norm• immigrant families lived in small, dark, unventilated

apartments with no toilet/plumbing• disease was rampant• a handful of men, however, made fortunes and lived

like royalty (Rockefeller, Carnegie, etc.)

DISCONTENT

• Women: did not have the vote (suffrage=right to vote)

• African-Americans: no longer slaves, but still suffering prejudice

• Workers: in need of labor reforms

Literature of the Period: Wartime Voices

– Wartime voices recorded the experiences of the war in…• diaries• letters• journals• speeches• Lincoln was one of the greatest masters of the

language at mid-century

Literature of the Period: Wartime Voices

• Antislavery Writings: For instance, The Liberator or Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• Harper’s Weekly: A collection of political cartoons

Literature of the Period: Frontier Voices

• Writers– Bret Harte (born in New York but moved to

California as a young man)– Willa Cather (moved from Virginia to Nebraska

as a child)– Mark Twain: pseudonym of Samuel Clemens

(grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, but traveled widely and settled in a Nevada mining town during the Civil War)

Literature of the Period: Realism

• began after the Civil War

• opposed Romanticism; paralleled Impressionism in Europe

• focused on portraying real life as ordinary people lived it

• attempted to show characters and events in an honest, objective, almost factual way.

Literature of the Period: Naturalism

• also depicted real people in real situations, but they believed that forces larger than the individual—fate, heredity, nature—shaped individual destiny.

• Leader—Stephen Crane

• Jack London is a famous naturalist writer.

• Both movements signal a shift in American literature from idealism to practicality

Literature of Discontent