Victorian America and the Civil War

Anne Rose examines the relationship between American Victorian culture and the Civil War, arguing that Romanticism was at the heart of Victorian culture. Through the biographies of seventy-five Victorian Americans the book compares the passion surrounding the War with the traditional view of 'polite' Victorian society.

Victorian America and the Civil War examines the relationship 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. Anne Rose is the author of the award-winning book Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, 1830–1850.