America’s Second Revolution: New England, Old England, & the Civil War

Why did most of Great Britain’s intellectual and artistic class sympathize with the Confederacy, either overtly or covertly, during the Civil War? Join Professor Len Gougeon as he examines the cultural conflict that erupted between New England poets and intellectuals and their British counterparts as a result of tensions arising out of the Civil War. Professor Gougeon is a Distinguished University Fellow at the University of Scranton, where he teaches American literature. He is the author of Virtue’s Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform and Emerson and Eros: The Making of a Cultural Hero. This event is co-sponsored by The New England Quarterly.