RTT Quarterly April-June 2026: 19th Century Americas - EXCLUDING The Old West

Grant at Appomattox Court House by Frank Kohl, Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Park

19th-century United States (1801–1900) was a period of rapid transformation marked by territorial expansion, industrial growth, political change, and social conflict. New territories were being added to the union, which intensified debates about slavery and culminated in the U.S. Civil War, after which the country entered a period of Reconstruction and accelerated industrialization.

In Canada, British colonies gradually moved toward greater self-government, culminating in the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.

In Mexico, the century was politically turbulent, beginning with independence from Spain in 1821. Mexico experienced internal conflicts, foreign intervention, and the loss of large northern territories to the United States after the Mexican-American War (1846–1848). Later in the century, modernization efforts occurred under the rule of Porfirio Díaz, although they came with a great loss of the middle class and the resultant multitude of the poor.

Important Events North America 19th Century (excluding the Old West)

1802-Alexander Hamilton begins publishing the New York Evening Post
1804-World population reaches 1 billion
1810-The shout of “Delores” begins the Mexican War for Independence
War of 1812 between US & Great Britain over piracy and impressment on the high seas. Washington D.C. is burned.
1820-1842 Industrial Revolution-child labor exploited, especially in mines & textile industry
1820-The Missouri Compromise—admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state to keep the balance. Slavery was not permitted north of the 36’30.
1821-Mexico gains independence from Spain with the Treaty of Córdoba
1824-Erie Canal opens in New York connecting Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean
1831-Nat Turner and a band of slaves lead an insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia. The rebellion is put to an end two days later. As many as two hundred African Americans, including innocent victims, died as a result
Rebellions of 1837 fail in Canada
1840-Upper & Lower Canada are merged into the Province of Canada
1841-William Henry Harrison is the 1st U.S. president to die in office
1843-Edgar Allen Poe published The Tell-Tale Heart
1851-Herman Melville publishes Moby Dick
1852-Frederick Douglass delivers his speech "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" in Rochester, New York.
1854-The Kansas Nebraska Act passed which repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing for popular sovereignty where slavery was concerned. The cause of “Bloody Kansas.”
1855-Walt Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass
1857-Dred Scott Decision denies citizenship to a freed African-American
1859 John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry
1861-1865 U.S. Civil War—the Union vs. the seceding Confederacy
1861-1867 The creation of the Second Mexican Empire, ruled by Maximilian I of Mexico and his consort Carlota of Mexico.
1863- US President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation stating that all slaves in the seceding Confederate States were free.
1865-U.S. General Robert E. Lee surrenders to U.S. General U.S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, to very lenient terms.
April 14 1865: : United States President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth, while attending a performance at Ford's Theater, Washington, D.C. He dies approximately nine hours after being shot on April 15, 1865.
1872-Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for voting in the 1872 U.S. presidential election.
1877-Thomas Edison invents the phonograph
1879-Thomas Edison invents the first incandescent light bulb
1881-U.S. President James Garfield is assassinated
1884 -Mark Twain published Huckleberry Finn
1886-Coca Cola is developed
1898-Spanish-American War, major charge led by Teddy Roosevelt
1900- L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz



For this quarter, you can read books about the Americas (US, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America) during the 19th century (excluding the Old West) or published during this time. We are saving the Old West for the next quarter. As always, either fiction or non-fiction will fit the bill!

Reading possibilities & reads by LTers in the past:

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (1820)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) & Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (1881)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899)
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane (1893)
Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1836)
The Raven and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854)
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855)
Poems by Emily Dickinson (published posthumously, 1890s)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861)
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1860s North Carolina)
Destiny of the Republic, Candice Millard (1880s Washington DC)
The Night Birds, Thomas Maltman (1862 Minnesota)
Run Away Home, Patricia Mckissack (1880s Alabama)
The Silk Train Murder, Sharon Rowse (1899 Vancouver, British Columbia)
The Alienist
A Blaze of Glory by Jeff Shaara
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
The Europeans
The Virgin Cure
Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly
Kindred
The Battle of the Crater by Newt Gingrich
Lincoln: A Photobiography
The Old Maid by Edith Wharton
American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles by Thomas Keneally
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allen Poe

What will you be reading?

Wiki https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Quarterly_Theme_Rea...

Thinking I might finally get to Leon Edel's five -volume biography of Henry James, which I've had around for years in a ppback box set. Or Sheldon Novick's two-volume James bio, which I've had around just about as long – though I personally prefer Edel if I don't have time to get to both.

Of course, James straddles into the next century, but his literarily productive years ended in the very first few years of the 1900s.

As for James novels, I'd particularly like to do a reread of The Princess Casamassima, though I should prefix that with a reread of Roderick Hudson, where the Princess first appeared as Christina Light (the only instance where James returned to a character in a later novel).

And to keep to all things Jamesian, I've also got the two-volume Library of America of William.

Or I could do my Library of America volume of Henry Adams, who really does straddle the centuries more than James. I could do Democracy (1880) and Esther (1884) this quarter and then Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904) and The Education (1918) when the first period of the 20th century rolls around – though as I understand, The Education ends autobiographically in 1905, so it could well be appropriate to this quarter's time period, and MSM&C is really a musing on the late 19th century.

I saw a used copy of Burr by Gore Vidal at the thrift store yesterday. Haven't read it in decades so I picked it up and paged through it. I recall liking it very much, but I knew significantly less US history of that time than I know now, so decided to re-read it.

>3 Cardboard_killer: I've read the entire Narratives of Empire heptalogy (which should be read in "story" order, not publication order). Overall, Burr is probably the best of the seven, although I do like all of the first five – though I don't care for the last two, Washington, D.C. and The Golden Age, and Lincoln tends to be a little too reverent (though important for the narrative voice of Lincoln's younger secretary, John Hay, who reappears in the series years later as McKinley/TR secretary of state). What I especially like about Burr is Aaron Burr's catty tone of voice as narrator, sounding a lot like Vidal's own cattiness.

In later volumes, there's a great scene in Empire when, as I recall, John Hay and Henry Adams are chatting together over a private brunch when who but the Old Master himself (Henry James, of course) drops by, having just stopped over in a visit from England and talking like a page out of one of his late novels in hundred-plus words to a sentence. Vidal wasn't, I don't think, making fun of James but rather James the character was making fun of himself. (In fact, sometimes I think Vidal looked upon himself as James's successor as "great American novelist"!)

And I especially liked Hollywood for its sympathetic portrayal of Warren Harding, who I think is our most underrated president. Not a great president by any means, but really underrated – having freed Eugene Debs and several other war resisters from Woodrow Wilson's prisons and having convened the Washington Naval Conference, then shepherding the treaty through Senate ratification as the first multinational arms control treaty in history. Vidal, at Hollywood's conclusion, quotes his grandfather Thomas Gore (the blind senator from Oklahoma, a Democrat and like Harding a foreign-policy anti-interventionist) as describing Harding as "too nice a man to be president."

Vidal's become popular today among anti-war libertarians, and his Narratives of Empire series is one reason for it.

There are two I really want to get to, from my shelves:
American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles, by Thomas Keneally one of my fav authors, and a short story by Edith Wharton, The Old Maid.

>1 Tess_W: The Americas would be a good choice, I’d like to find something about the independence movements in South America.

Barbara Michaels wrote 'Houses of Stone' in the 90's, but it is centered and driven by a newly discovered unpublished novel written in the early 19th Century by an unknown author named Ismene. English professor Karen Holloway acquires the manuscript against the competition of other academics.

She seeks answers to the author's identity and the story in a two hundred year old mansion in the Tidewater region of the South. Threats, accidents, threats of violence, and a restless ghost complicate her search for the answers. Very gothic and well done!

>1 Tess_W: If you can't change the wording in the thread title yourself, I think the Admin (@DeltaQueen50) might be able to do that for you.

My reading possibilities are:

Willa Cather: The Song of the Lark (1915)--partially set in the 1880s and 1890s; and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)--set in 1850s New Mexico
Kate Chopin: At Fault (1890)--set in late 19th century Louisiana
Stephen Crane: Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1893), or a re-read of The Red Badge of Courage (1895), set during the Civil War
Theodore Dreiser: Jennie Gerhardt (1911)--set in 1880s-1890s Cleveland and Chicago
Fanny Fern: Ruth Hall (1855)
Henry James: The American (1877) or The Bostonians (1886)
George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo (2017)

>8 kac522: Yes, I haven't contacted her, but I will! TY! Some good possibilities there!

>6 MissWatson: Check out Bolivar: American Liberator by Marie Arana. It's got some very complimemtary LT reviews and I gave it 4**** (without reviewing) some time ago..

I have much more on my shelves for this topic than I thought. So far my plans are:

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Vivid by Beverly Jenkins

Vivid is a historical romance set in Michigan by a Black author and with Black characters. The female main character is a doctor and the male main character is the mayor. Thus, it is a little different from the usual fare in that genre.

I started both of these books several years ago and liked them, but abandoned both of them for one reason or the other, so I am looking forward to getting back to them.

I really like the inclusion of Central and South America and would like to read something from there as well if I can find something on my shelves that fits.

>11 CurrerBell: Thanks for the recommendation!

>5 Tess_W: loved that wharton story started my summer of wharton had a great time exploring her writing

I read The righteous killers : the John A. Murrell Excitement and Southern mob law, 1835 by William J LaFrankie. This book is a fictional retelling of some real incidents in 1834-35, primarily in Mississippi, but some of it is also set in Tennessee. John Murrell was a person who engaged in a number of illegal activities. In June 1834, he pretended to be a preacher and went to a Camp Meeting in Vicksburg, where he and a gang stole horses and slaves. He was subsequently caught and tried on different charges in Tennessee. Meanwhile, a sensational pamphlet accused him of not only being a thief, but planning to incite a slave rebellion. The heightened tensions from all of this led to a riot in Vicksburg a year later, and the lynching of several gamblers. There were apparently riots in many places in the country around this time.

This book does a decent job of showing us what Camp Meetings/religious revivals were like in the South at this time. We also get a good sense of the tension in the South in these years following the Nat Turner rebellion. Unfortunately, the book is poorly written. I suppose I should have expected that when I saw that it was self-published. There are partial sentences, and sometimes the author uses a word when a different one would convey the meaning better. The books is in desperate need of an editor. There is also a lot of swearing and an unnecessary sex scene. I cannot recommend this one.

Apparently I have both The Virgin Cure and The Dante Club. So I'll probably read one of those, depending on which I find first unless I find something else that fits while I'm on the hunt.

I read 2 short stories, both by Stephen Vincent Benet: The Devil and Daniel Webster and Daniel Webster and the Sea Serpent. Both were "tall tales" and take place in New England in the 1840's. 38 pages 4*

I read an additional epic poem by Stephen Vincent Benet: John Brown's Body. This poem won a Pulitzer Prize and is set during the US Civil War. The title of the poem is taken from both an actual event and its resultant song. The poem follows multiple characters both Union and Confederate and multiple social classes from the poor, wealthy plantation owners, slaves, and military personnel. IMHO this is such a great work of history (historical fiction). 357 pages 4*

I've got about another 800 pages of Benet in an anthology, but will put it back on the shelf, for now.

Now I've found the Washington Irving....must do a re-read of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkel!

I completed American Scoundrel: The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles by Thomas Keneally This biography traces the life of Daniel Sickles—Congressman, Tammany Hall insider, Civil War general, U.S. Ambassador to Spain, and notorious womanizer. Even before his marriage, Sickles was involved with a mistress, and throughout his life he seemed to live in two worlds: one of public service and another marked by deception and excess.

Sickles moved among powerful figures such as Presidents James Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant, as well as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. His most infamous act came when he shot and killed Philip Barton Key II—the son of Francis Scott Key—after discovering Key’s affair with his wife. In a landmark case, Sickles became the first person to successfully use the “not guilty by reason of insanity” defense.

Sickles lived to the age of 95, never abandoning his unfaithful habits. Before reading this book, I had never heard of Sickles, but Thomas Keneally, as usual, writes a good book.

I listened to this on audiobook (13 hrs 40 mins, or 416 pages). 4* RTT: 19th Century America

Completed Hospital Sketches by Louisa May Alcott A short novella (my edition, but some editions are short stories) based Alcott's time as a nurse volunteer during the Civil War. This is an early and very rudimentary. 104 pages 3 (very average) stars

>19 Tess_W: Read this one quite a number of years ago and kinda liked it, at least to the tune of giving it 3***, and I generally don't like Alcott. (I'm definitely with "Anne with an E" Shirley of Green Gables fame, speaking of which my favorite is Anne of Avonlea for the character of Miss Lavender.)

>20 CurrerBell: Am a Montgomery fan myself. Am taking a cruise this summer and will get to see the Green Gables on PEI.

I read An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce Event that takes place during the US Civil War. 24 pages 5 stars

>22 Tess_W: I remember seeing the film of this in school, either junior high or early high school. It was chilling and I have never forgotten it. I don't know if we saw the original French version or the "Twilight Zone" version; probably the latter because it did have the English title.

>23 kac522: It is chilling! I couldn't really write a reveiw without giving most everything away. At a quick glance, it appears there are 2-3 versions of the movie on Youtube. Am going to check them out. Thanks!

ETA The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was the last episode of the Twilight Zone ever filmed/produced.

>24 Tess_W: I don't remember a lot from those school years, but this film stands out in my memory (noisy old-time school projector and all). What's weird is that in school we didn't have to read the story, we just watched the film; I don't know why it was shown or if we had a discussion about it. I didn't even know it was an Ambrose Bierce story, so I'll need to find it.

>25 kac522: I'd be surprised if the movie can be as good as the book, which is really a psychological suspense---Hitchcock is good at that, but I have reservations!

>26 Tess_W: Well, it made a lasting impression on young me, still remembering the shock of it some 60 years later....

I read Glory Road by Bruce Catton, the second book in his trilogy on The Army of the Potomac. I read the first book about a year and a half ago. If I have time I may read the third one, but given the other books I want to read for this challenge, I may not be able to fit that one in this time around.

>22 Tess_W: Tess, thanks for your posts about Bierce's story. As I said above, I knew the film but not that it was a story by Ambrose Bierce. And karma was working for me today at a library sale when I came across The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce for $1, so I couldn't pass it up! I'm not sure all read all the stories, but I'll definitely be reading that one and some others.

Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman I "found" this on my bookshelf at school and just sat down and read it! (after school, of course!) This book spans Lincoln's life from his boyhood through his assassination with a collection of pictures beginning in 1848 when Lincoln was a lawyer on the frontier (Illinois). This is a great biography and even greater set of pictures. Reading age 10-15. 165 pages 5 stars

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder This is the story of Almanzo Wilder growing up as a boy in up-state New York. I was really able to appreciate this book as it told the story of trying to save potatoes from a killing frost, the country fair, and Almanzo's possible apprenticeship. What a great read. Glad I'm revisiting this series again. 384 pages 5 stars

I have finished Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. It tells the story of a wounded Confederate soldier (Inman) who is fed up with war and leaves the hospital where he is recovering to walk west across North Carolina back to his home and his sweetheart, Ada. At the same time, Ada's father has died, and she has to figure out how to live on her own, in the Appalachian mountains, where she is not prepared to run a farm or even take care of herself. A neighbor sends her help in the person of Ruby, who has grown up having to take care of herself from the time she was a child. It deals with the inner lives of the main characters, although Inman does have adventures on his trek west. I thought it was a good story.