The Atlantic magazine’s special Civil War Commemorative issue, featuring writing by several with Bowdoin ties-including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bowdoin Class of 1825; his Bowdoin classmate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote much of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Brunswick-is now available.

Last week, NPR featured a segment about this issue, in which “The Atlantic…reaches back to a time when [the matter of slavery] wasn’t yet settled, and monumental questions were still up in the air: Would slavery continue? Would America remain united?”

They were some of the country’s early intellectuals and they used their Boston-based journal to challenge the institution of slavery.