51. Abolitionist Movement

The Abolitionist Movement set in motion actions in every state to abolish slavery. By 1804, abolitionists succeeded in passing legislation eventually emancipate the slaves in every state north The principal organized bodies to advocate this reform were the Society of Friends, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society and the New York Manumission Society. The last was headed by powerful Federalist politicians: John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and Republican Aaron Burr.After the American Revolutionary War, Quaker and Moravian advocates helped persuade numerous slaveholders in the Upper South to free their slaves. Manumissions increased for nearly two decades. Slaveholders freed slaves in such number that the percentage of free Negroes in the Upper South increased sharply from one to ten percent, with most of that increase in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. American had freed or would ever free.Often slaveholders came to their decisions by their own struggles in the Revolution; their wills and deeds frequently cited language about the equality of men supporting their manumissions.John Brown (1800–1859), abolitionist who advocated armed insurrection to overthrow the institution of slavery. He organized the Pottawatomie Massacre (1856) and was later executed for leading an unsuccessful 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

52. James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.Cooper was born in New Jersey. At 14, Cooper was enrolled at Yale, but he did not obtain a degree. He obtained work as a sailor on merchant vessels, and at 19, Cooper joined the United States Navy. He obtained the rank of midshipman before leaving .He anonymously published his first book, Precaution (1820). He soon issued several others under his own name. In 1823, he published The Pioneers; this was the first of the Leatherstocking series, featuring Natty Bumppo, the resourceful American woodsman at home with the Delaware Indians and especially their chief Chingachgook. In 1826 Cooper moved his family to Europe, having accepted a position with the United States government. While overseas he continued to write. His books published in Paris include The Red Rover, and The Waterwitch—two of his many sea stories.

The Last of the Mohicans is a historical novel by Cooper, first published in January 1826.

It was one of the most popular English-language novels of its time. The Last of the Mohicans is widely read in American literature courses. This second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy is the best known.Cooper named a principal character Uncas after a real person. Uncas was a Mohegan, not a Mohican, and Cooper's usage has helped to confuse the names of two tribes to the present day. When John Uncas, his last surviving male descendant died in 1842, the Newark Daily Advertiser wrote "Last of the Mohegans Gone" lamenting the extinction of the tribe.[2] The writer was not aware that Mohegans still existed then, as they do to the present day.The story takes place in 1757 during the Seven Years' War (known in America as the French and Indian War), when France and the United Kingdom battled for control of the North American colonies. During this war, the French often allied themselves with Native American tribes in order to gain an advantage over the British, with unpredictable and often tragic results.The story is set in the British province of New York during the French and Indian War, and concerns--in part--a Huron massacre (with passive French acquiescence) of from 500 to 1,500 Anglo-American troops, who had honorably surrendered at Fort William Henry, plus some women and servants; the kidnapping of two sisters, daughters of the British commander; and their rescue by the last two Mohicans, and others. Parts of the story may have been derived from the capture and death of Jane McCrea in July 1777 near Fort Edward, New York, by members of an Algonquian tribe.The Leatherstocking Tales is a series of novels by American writer James Fenimore Cooper, each featuring the main hero Natty Bumppo.

53. Henry Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American educator and poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and "Evangeline". He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets.Longfellow was born in Portland and studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems .After graduating in 1825, he was offered a job as professor of modern languages at his alma mater. The story, possibly apocryphal, is that an influential trustee, Benjamin Orr, had been so impressed by Longfellow's translation of Horace that he was hired under the condition that he travel to Europe to study French, Spanish, and Italian.During his years teaching at the college, he wrote textbooks in French, Italian, and Spanish;[25] his first published book was in 1833, a translation of the poetry of medieval Spanish poet Jorge Manrique. He also published a travel book: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, first published in serial form before a book edition was released in 1835.Shortly after the book's publication, Longfellow attempted to join the literary circle in New York and asked George Pope Morris for an editorial role at one of Morris's publications. When he returned to the United States in 1836, Longfellow took up the professorship at Harvard.

The Song of Hiawatha is an 1855 epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow based on the legends of the Ojibway Indians. Longfellow credited as his source the work of pioneering ethnographer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, specifically Schoolcraft's Algic Researches and History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States.

The Song unfolds a legend of Hiawatha and his lover, Minnehaha. The poem closes with the approach of a birch canoe to Hiawatha's village, containing "the Priest of Prayer, the Pale-face."Hiawatha and the chiefs accept their message. Hiawatha bids farewell to Nokomis, the warriors, and the young men, giving them this charge: "But my guests I leave behind me/Listen to their words of wisdom,Listen to the truth they tell you." Having endorsed the Christian missionaries, he launches his canoe for the last time westward toward the sunset, and departs forever.

54. Walter Whitman (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.

Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War in addition to publishing his poetry. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's major work, Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle.Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. He supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally, but did not believe in the abolitionist movement.

Leaves of Grass.Whitman claimed that after years of competing for "the usual rewards", he determined to become a poet. He first experimented with a variety of popular literary genres which appealed to the cultural tastes of the period. As early as 1850, he began writing what would become Leaves of Grass, a collection of poetry which he would continue editing and revising until his death. Whitman paid for the publication of the first edition of Leaves of Grass himself and had it printed at a local print shop during their breaks from commercial jobs.The hero of the revolutionary free verses of Leaves Grass is Whitman himself.

55. Irwin Shaw (February 27 1913 – May 16 1984) was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author. Shaw was born in New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants. Irwin changed his surname upon entering college. He spent most of his youth in Brooklyn, where he graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1934.Shaw began screenwriting in 1935 at the age of 21, and scripted for several radio shows.Shaw's first play, Bury the Dead (1936) was an expressionist drama about a group of soldiers killed in a battle who refuse to be buried. During the 1940s, Shaw wrote for a number of films, including The Talk of the Town ,The Commandos Strike at Dawn .Shaw enlisted in the U.S. Army and was a warrant officer during World War II. The Young Lions, Shaw's first novel, was published in 1949. Based on his experiences in Europe during the war, the novel was very successful and was adapted into a 1958 film. Shaw's second novel, The Troubled Air, chronicling the rise of McCarthyism, was published in 1951. While living in Europe, Shaw wrote more bestselling books, notably Lucy Crown Two Weeks in Another Town Rich Man, Poor Man (for which he would later write a less successful sequel entitled Beggarman, Thief) and Evening in Byzantium .His novel Top of the Hill was made into a TV movie about the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980. During his lifetime Shaw won a number of awards, including two O. Henry Awards, a National Institute of Arts and Letters grant, and three Playboy Awards.Rich Man, Poor Man is a novel written by Irwin Shaw in 1969. It is the last of the novels of Shaw's middle period before he began to concentrate, in his last works such as Evening In Byzantium, Nightwork, Bread Upon The Waters, and Acceptable Losses, on the inevitability of impending death.The novel is a sprawling work and covers many of the themes Shaw returns to again and again in all of his fiction - Americans living as expatriates in Europe, the McCarthy era, children trying to break away from the kind of life lived by their parents, social and political issues of capitalism, the pain of relationships. On the very first page Shaw subtly telegraphs the sad ending of the story, in the same way that the first scene of a film will often quote the last scene.Originally published as a short story in Playboy Magazine, it became an international bestseller when published as a novel. The bulk of the novel concerns the three children of Mary Pease and Axel Jordache - the eldest, Gretchen, the middle child, Rudolph, and the youngest, Thomas. It chronicles their experiences from the end of World War 2 until the late 1960s.

56. Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.Frost grew up in the city, and published his first poem in his high school's magazine. He attended Dartmouth College long enough to be accepted into the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. Frost returned home to teach and to work at various jobs including delivering newspapers and factory labor. He did not enjoy these jobs at all, feeling his true calling as a poet.In 1894 he sold his first poem, "My Butterfly: An Elegy.In 1912 Frost sailed with his family to Great Britain, living first in Glasgow before settling in Beaconsfield outside London. His first book of poetry, A Boy's Will, was published the next year. In England he made some important acquaintances, including Edward Thomas (a member of the group known as the Dymock Poets), and Ezra Pound. For forty-two years, from 1921 to 1963, Frost spent almost every summer and fall teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College, at the mountain campus at Ripton, Vermont. He is credited as a major influence upon the development of the school and its writing programs; the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference gained renown during Frost's tenure there.[citation needed] The college now owns and maintains his former Ripton farmstead as a national historic site near the Bread Loaf campus. In 1921 Frost accepted a fellowship teaching post at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Harvard's 1965 alumni directory indicates Frost received an honorary degree there. He also received honorary degrees from Bates College and from Oxford and Cambridge universities; and he was the first person to receive two honorary degrees from Dartmouth College. During his lifetime the Robert Frost Middle School in Fairfax, Virginia, and the main library of Amherst College were named after him.Frost's poems are critiqued in the "Anthology of Modern American Poetry", Oxford University Press, where it is mentioned that behind a sometimes charmingly familiar and rural façade, Frost's poetry frequently presents pessimistic and menacing undertones which often are not recognized nor analyzed.

57. A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway, first published in 1929. Much of the novel was written at the home of Hemingway's in-laws in Piggott, Arkansas.The novel is told through the point of view of Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I. The title is taken from a poem by 16th century English dramatist George Peele.The novel is divided into five books. In the first book, Henry meets and attempts to seduce Catherine Barkley and their relationship begins. While on the Italian front, Henry is wounded in the knee by a mortar shell and sent to a hospital in Milan. The second book shows the growth of Henry and Catherine's relationship as they spend time together in Milan over the summer. Henry falls in love with Catherine and by the time he is healed, Catherine is three months pregnant. In the third book, Henry returns to his unit, but not long after, the Austro-Germans break through the Italian lines and the Italians retreat. Henry kills an engineering sergeant for insubordination. After falling behind and catching up again, Henry is taken to a place by the "battle police" where officers are being interrogated and executed for the "treachery" that supposedly led to the Italian defeat. However, after hearing the execution of a Lt.Colonel, Henry escapes by jumping into a river. In the fourth book, Catherine and Henry reunite and flee to Switzerland in a rowing boat. In the final book, Henry and Catherine live a quiet life in the mountains until she goes into labour. After a long and painful labour, their son is stillborn. Catherine begins to haemorrhage and soon dies, leaving Henry to return to their hotel in the rain.

58. Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.Mark Twain was born in Florida.When Twain was four, his family moved to Hannibal, a port town on the Mississippi River that served as the inspiration for the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.At that time, Missouri was a slave state in the Union, and young Twain became familiar with the institution of slavery, a theme he later explored in his writing.In March 1847, when Twain was 11, his father died of pneumonia. The next year, he became a printer's apprentice. He began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper owned by his brother, Orion. When he was 18, he left Hannibal and worked as a printer in New York City, Philadelphia.He joined the union and educated himself in public libraries in the evenings, finding wider sources of information than he would have at a conventional school.

Twain then traveled to San Francisco, California, where he continued as a journalist and began lecturing. The quote on San Francisco weather attributed to Twain, The Coldest Winter he ever spent in his life, was a Summer in San Francisco. Twain began his career writing light, humorous verse but evolved into a grim, hypocrisies and murderous acts of mankind. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been repeatedly restricted in American high schools.