Download or read book The Oracle and the Curse written by Caleb Smith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caleb Smith explores the confessions, trial reports, maledictions, and martyr narratives that juxtaposed law and conscience in antebellum America’s court of public opinion and shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.