The result of the battle between the ironclads, the _Monitor_ and the
_Merrimac_ (1862), led to a change in the navies of the entire world.
Alaska was bought in 1867, and added an area more than two thirds as large
as the United States comprised in 1783. The improvement and extension of
education, the interest in social reform, the beginning of the decline of
the "let alone doctrine," the shortening of the hours of labor, and the
consequent increase in time for self-improvement,--are all especially
important steps of progress in this period.
Authors could no longer complain of small audiences. At the outbreak of the
Civil War the United States had a population of thirty-one millions, while
the combined population of Great Britain and Ireland was then only
twenty-nine millions. Before Holmes passed away in 1894 the population of
1860 had doubled. The passage of an international copyright law in 1891 at
last freed American authors from the necessity of competing with pirated
editions of foreign works.
SUMMARY
The great mid-nineteenth century group of New England writers included
Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, who were often called the Concord group, and
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Daniel Webster, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell,
Holmes, and the historians, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman.
Pages:
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351