Victorian America And The Civil War

Anne C. Rose traces the impact of the Civil War on American culture through a collective biography of seventy-five men and women. Rose argues that at the heart of American Victorian culture was romanticism, a secular quest to answer questions previously settled by traditional religion. Focusing on elements of disequilibrium, passion and intellectual excitement. Victorian culture in America is shown to deviate widely from the standard conceptions of orderliness and moral self-assurance.

Victorian America and the Civil War examines the relationships between American Victorian culture and the Civil War. The author argues that at the heart of American Victorian culture was Romanticism, a secular quest to answer questions previously settled by traditional religion. In examining the biographies of seventy-five Americans who lived in the antebellum and Civil War eras, elements of disequilibrium, passion and intellectual excitement are explored in contrast to the traditional view of Victorian self-control and moral assurance. The Civil War is shown to be a central event in the cultural life of the American Victorians, which both was an environment for the resolution of their questions and a place where their values and aspirations could be reshaped.