Today it is widely understood that slavery is a stain on American history — indelible and regrettable. But on the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, a new issue of The Atlantic magazine reaches back to a time when this matter wasn't yet settled, and monumental questions were still up in the air: Would slavery continue? Would America remain united?
The magazine was founded by a group of prominent writers, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
