In The Colorful Conservative, R.O.P. López culls important insights into American culture from the works of Phillis Wheatley, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, William Wells Brown, and Walt Whitman. López contends that many of the tensions that emerged prior to the Civil War remain unresolved; thus, the nineteenth century never ended and Americans still live in the literary framework of the 1800s. Beyond political distinctions of the left and the right, there are really four poles: The Left, The Conformist Burkeans, The Anarchist-Nihilist-Libertarians, and The Colorful Conservatives. The Left and the Colorful Conservatives are the two poles most at odds with each other. The Colorful Conservatives, López argues, encompass these five American authors and are the driving force behind many unique paradoxes in the United States' political culture.