This lecture explores the night time in nineteenth-century American literature. It will outline how issues crucial to nation building in the United States, such as freedom and captivity, gender and race, all related to nighttime activity. With references to core texts including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, it considers how American literature built upon the nation’s preoccupation with nocturnal control