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9781107426986

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'In this stunningly original work, Ethan J. Kytle uncovers the critical connection between romanticism and the antislavery crusade of the 1850s. Based on a deep reading of archival sources and bristling with fresh insights, Romantic Reformers and the Antislavery Struggle in the Civil War Era reveals how these abolitionists blended the perfectionism of an earlier generation with sentimentalism and martial heroism. Sophisticated and elegantly written, it is a stimulating and altogether absorbing book.' Douglas R. Egerton, author of Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election That Brought on the Civil War 'Ethan Kytle's adept and sympathetic recapitulation of the lives and thought of five antislavery figures is collective biography at its best. His book makes the most convincing case for the significance of abolitionist romanticism in the coming of the Civil War and Emancipation.' Manisha Sinha, author of The Slave's Cause: Abolition and the Origins of American Democracy 'Ethan J. Kytle focuses on five prominent figures - Theodore Parker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Martin Robison Delany, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson - with a chapter devoted to each. Although the scholarly literature on these subjects is substantial, Kytle is able to accomplish much. First, his writing is refreshingly lucid, and the organization well honed. Second, the selection of these five individuals allows not only for a close biographical analysis but also comparisons with their contemporaries in the decades spanning the Civil War ... With deft integration of the copious historiography and primary sources, Kytle is able to provide fresh perspectives on seemingly familiar topics.' Lawrence B. Goodheart, Journal of American History 'Romantic Reformers [and the Antislavery Struggle in the Civil War Era] fulfills its promise to delineate the various ways in which romanticism, 'America's most important intellectual current', was strategically and thoughtfully deployed by second-generation abolitionists during the 1850s ... It offers a valuable and lively contribution, for scholars and students alike, to the scholarship of antebellum American history and literary studies as well as to the expanding genre of reform biography.' The Journal of the Civil War Era '... an interesting, well-written, and engaging collective biography that challenges long-held assumptions about the pacifist and apolitical nature of abolition in nineteenth-century America. [This book] is sure to be an attractive option for instructors to assign in introductory surveys and upper-level seminars.' Suzanne Cooper Guasco, American Historical Review

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Ethan J. Kytle is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Fresno. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture in Charleston, South Carolina, and has been awarded the Mary Kelley Prize by the New England American Studies Association.

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