What I never Realized in the Civil War

I keep forgetting how many luminaries of the 19th Century were alive during the Civil War.  Nathanial Hawthorn, Walt Whitman (who nursed others in the hospitals in Washington, DC), Emily Dickinson, Henry Adams, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Clara Barton, Emerson, and others.  And the list goes on and on.  And just regular folks who write movingly beyond our ability these days.  Truly stunning prose.  Truly stunning.