It may serve as another illustration of Professor
Shaler's law of tension and release. The one overshadowing issue
which had absorbed so much thought and imagination and energy had
suddenly disappeared. Other shadows were to gather, of course.
Reconstruction of the South was one of them, and the vast
economic and industrial changes that followed the opening of the
New West were to bring fresh problems almost as intricate as the
question of slavery had been. But for the moment no one thought
of these things. The South accepted defeat as superbly as she had
fought, and began to plough once more. The jubilant North went
back to work--to build transcontinental railroads, to organize
great industries, and to create new states.
The significant American literature of the first decade after the
close of the War is not in the books dealing directly with themes
involved in the War itself. It is rather the literature of this
new release of energy, the new curiosity as to hitherto unknown
sections, the new humor and romance. Fred Lewis Pattee, the
author of an admirable "History of American Literature since
1870," uses scarcely too strong a phrase when he entitles this
period "The Second Discovery of America"; and he quotes
effectively from Mark Twain, who was himself one of these
discoverers: "The eight years in America from 1860 to 1868
uprooted institutions that were centuries old, changed the
politics of a people, transformed the social life of half the
country, and wrought so profoundly upon the entire national
character that the influence cannot be measured short of two or
three generations.
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