Ecstatic Nation illuminates one of the most dramatic and momentous chapters in America's past, when the country dreamed big, craved new lands and new freedom, and was bitterly divided over its great moral wrong: slavery. With a canvas of extraordinary characters, such as P.T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, and L.C.Q. Lamar, Ecstatic Nation balances cultural and political history: it provides an account of the sectional conflict that preceded the Civil War, and it chronicles the complex aftermath of that war and Reconstruction, including the promise that women would share in a new definition of American citizenship. It takes us from photographic surveys of the Sierra Nevadas to the discovery of gold in the South Dakota hills, and it signals the painful, thrilling birth of modern America.--From publisher description.

Maps on lining papers.

The end of Earth -- 1848-1861. Higher laws ; Who ain't a slave? ; One aggresses ; Democracy ; Sovereignty ; Revolutions never go backward ; The impending crisis ; A clank of metal -- 1861-1865. On to Richmond ; Battle cry of freedom ; This thing now never seems to stop ; The last full measure of devotion ; Fairly won ; Armed liberty ; And this is Richmond ; The simple, fierce deed -- 1865-1876. But half accomplished ; Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum ; Power ; Deep water ; Running from the past ; Westward the course of empire ; With the Ten Commandments in one hand ; Conciliation, or, The living.