The Antebellum Crisis & America's First Bohemians

Amid the social and political tensions plaguing the United States prior to the Civil War, the North experienced a boom of cultural activity. Young writers, artists, and musicians settled in northern cities and called themselves "bohemians." Building on midcentury abolitionist, socialist, and free labor sentiments, bohemian influence reached beyond the arts to political radicalism and social revolution. Focusing on the overlapping nature of culture and politics, historian Mark A. Lause delves into the world of antebellum bohemians and the newspapermen who surrounded them.