Download or read book A People's Contest written by Phillip Shaw Paludan and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 1988 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A People's Contest" explores the interrelationships between the two great events of nineteenth-century America: the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution. It describes how the North redefined itself as a modern nation through the war and the vast economic and social changes that accompanied it. Much of the story is told through the lives and writings of individuals, many of them little known and some -- Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson -- familiar to us all. The book weaves together insights drawn from literature, economics, diplomacy, law, and religion to place the war in the context of the larger transformations of the age and show why it remains the nation's most compelling experience. -- From publisher's description.