When the American Civil War began in 1861, Walt Whitman was already one of the nation’s most distinctive literary voices. His Leaves of Grass had celebrated democracy and the spirit of the American people. But nothing in his earlier work could have prepared him for the human cost of the conflict that soon engulfed the...Read More

Most people imagine Santa Claus as a plump, bearded gift-bringer who dresses in red and rides a sleigh from the North Pole. Some assume this image was created by 20th-century Christmas advertising, but the real architect of the modern Santa was a Civil War–era political cartoonist: Thomas Nast, one of the most influential illustrators in...Read More