I was skimming a fun book by library historian David Kaser Books and Libraries in Camp and Battle: The Civil War Experience where he suggests that in 1860 American men were pretty much 90% literate and books had become incredibly cheap (especially with the introduction of the dime novel, introduced in 1860 at the advent of the war, primarily as the price of paper continued to plummet),

But men had almost no time to read.  Male culture at the time emphasized work and sociability, and reading would have been an odd pastime (pace Lincoln?!).

The civil war unintentionally gave millions of men unprecedented amounts of idle time, as they sat in camps awaiting orders etc.  With little entertainment, men turned to reading light fiction in massive numbers, which Kaser compellingly demonstrates through extensive anecdotes from letters written back home during the period and other evidence.  Once bitten with the escapism of light fiction adventure tales, men kept on reading and the book industry flourished.  So a large constituency that might have been quite hostile to spending public money on libraries, may have become very encouraging!

(crossposted with FAVL blog)