Who did Herman Melville call the meteor that ignited the civil war?

Answer 1

John Brown, who took over the armory in Harpers Ferry, for however briefly, to try and get the slaves to rise up in revolt. He failed at that. Robert E. Lee, then a lieutenant in the United States army, captured him. He was hung for treason, in what was then, Charles Town, Virginia, now in the state of West Virginia. The same boards he trod, the same seats the spectators sat in, the very lights themselves, (now electric, of course) still exist in the court house in Charles Town, WV. Even the jail still exists. It stood empty for a while, but now it's been renovated into both county offices and to original historical likeness of the jail as it was then. Signs will lead you to where they hung John Brown, just a few blocks away. (In someone's front yard now - it wasn't a front yard then, of course, but isn't that creepy? It would give me the willies to live there.)

Answer 2

Herman Melville referred to Nathaniel Hawthorne as the "meteor" that ignited the Civil War in a letter he wrote after Hawthorne's death. Melville believed that Hawthorne's writings and insights had a profound impact on the social and political climate of his time.