This book, introduced by one of our foremost historians, communicates the passionate spirit of a tempestuous age, an era of reform unlike any other in our history. The spirit of reform pervaded the atmosphere in the 30 years before the Civil War, the age of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Horace Mann, William Lloyd Garrison, and William Ellery Channing. The 55 documents included here begin with a letter from Thomas Jefferson at the end of his life (1826) and conclude with writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Horace Greeley.