[The Romantic Impulse]
- American literature and arts were regarded inferior than any Europeans’
- romanticism <- derived from Europe
- Central Theme : liberation of the human spirit
· literature, philosophy, politics and economics
(Nationalism and Romanticism in American Painting)
· naturalism – yearning for “wild nature”
o Hudson River School – artist school in NY
o portray of Hudson Valley
· later move to Yosemite Valley, Yellowstone, the Rocky Mountains
(An American Literature)
· 1820s : James Fenimore Cooper – evocation of the American West, ideal of independent individual with a natural inner goodness
o The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
o The Deerslayer (1841)
· Walt Whitman – democracy, the liberation of the individual spirit, and the pleasures of the flesh / yearning for emotional and physical release and personal fulfillment
o poetry, Leaves of Grass (1855)
· Herman Melville – tragedy of pride and revenge, courage and of the strength of human will
o Moby Dick (1851)
(Literature in the Antebellum South)
· Edgar Allen Poe – individual rising above the narrow confines of intellect and exploring the deeper world of the spirit and the emotions
o The Raven (1845)
· Beverly Tucker, William Alexander Caruthers, John Pendleton Kennedy – Romance and eulogies for the plantation system of the upper South
· William Gilmore Simms – nationalism, but esoteric to South
· Augustus B. Longstreet, Joseph G. Baldwin, Johnson J. Hooper – realists -> established Southern humors/ world of backwoods south and focused on ordinary people, poor whites
(The Transcendentalists)
· transcendentalist – NE writers and philosophers
o influenced by German and English writers and philosophers
· individualism : reasons & understanding <-> innate capacity (expression of emotion) vs. society’s requirement ß goal : liberate from “understanding”
· Concord, Massachusetts
· led by : Ralph Waldo Emerson
o Nature (1836) : self-fulfillment must be obtained through communion with the natural world
· influential : Henry David Thoreau
o Walden (1854) every individual should work for self-realization by resisting pressures of society
o Resistance to Civil Government (1849) : when government’s requirement violated an individual’s morality, then the government had no legitimate authority -> “civil disobedience” or “passive resistance” – public refusal to obey unjust laws
(The Defense of Nature)
· fear of Capitalist enthusiasm upon nature
· to transcendentalists : nature = source of deep, personal human inspiration
· essential unity between humanity and nature (spiritual unity)
(Visions of Utopia)
· Brook Farm (1841), West Roxbury, Massachusetts, by George Ripley : individuals would together create a new society for self-realization
o share equal labor and leisure
o dissolved in 1847
· Nathaniel Hawthorne – searching for Brook Farm
o The Blithedale Romance (1852), Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of Seven Gables (1851)
o tragedy of individuals cutting themselves under the rule of society
o egotism : the “serpent” of the heart of human misery
· New Harmony (1825), Indiana, by Robert Owen: “Village of Cooperation”
o every resident worked and lived in total equality
o economic failure
(Redefining Gender Role)
· Oneida Community (1848), upstate NY, by John Humphrey Noyes : “perfectionists” <- rejected traditional notions of family and marriage
o liberation of women from males’ demand
· Shakers (1770s), by Mother Ann Lee -> grew in Northeast and Northwest in the 1840s
o commitment to complete celibacy
o endorsed gender equality
(The Mormons)
· Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, began in NY, by Joseph Smith
· 1831 : began searching for new community of “saints” (called themselves “Latter-day Saints”
· introduced polygamy
· Missouri -> Ohio -> Illinois (Nauvoo Town), 1840s
o generally economically successful
o Smith ordered his followers to attack offending press -> Smith jailed -> was shot to death -> successor : Bringham Young
· Young travelled across Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains
o settled in Utah (including present day Salt Lake City)
· Reflection of human perfectibility, haven for demoralized people by the disorder and uncertainty of the outside world (economic marginal people)
[Remaking Society]
- new movements to remake mainstream society
(Revivalism, Morality, and Order)
· Second Great Awakening (1820s ~ )
· New Light – every individual was capable of salvation through is or her own efforts
· revivalism : crusade against personal immorality, in large scale
o drunkenness <- excess use of alcohol = crime, disorder, and poverty
o women : no money, and drunken husbands often abused them
· Temperance – many nativists believed that it was the cause of immigrants
o 1840 : a major national movement
(Health, Science, and Phrenology)
· cholera epidemics of 1830s and 1840s -> high death rate
· “water cure” (hydrotherapy)
· Sylvester Graham (Connecticut) : promoted eating vegetable, fruits, and bread made out of coarse grains
· phrenology (first from Germany) 1830s
o Orson and Lorenzo Fowler – Phrenology Almanac
o shape of individual’s skull = character and intelligence
(Medical Science)
· 1830s and 1840s : many opposed licensing of physicians (thought as a form of undemocratic monopoly) <- prestige of the profession remained low
· lacked knowledge on disease
· Edward Jenner – vaccination against smallpox (adapted from folk practices)
· William Morton – anesthetics (using sulphuric ether)
o John Warren – used sulphuric ether to sedate surgical patients
· most traditional surgeons and others mistrusted innovations and experimentation
· Oliver Wendell Holmes (1843) – discovery of infection
(Education)
· for universal public education
o 1830 : no such a system -> interest began growing rapidly
· Horace Mann (first secretary of the MA Board of Education) : education is essential for preserving democracy (since educated can be voted as electorates)
o established MA school system
o lengthened academic year to six months
o doubled teachers’ salaries
o broadened the curriculum
· other states followed
o creating teachers’ colleges
o principle of tax-supported elementary schools
· education system and quality varied from states to states
o East : no education access (due to dispersed population)
o South : all Africans barred from education, and 1/3 whites enrolled
o North : 72% enrolled
· moral education, discipline, respect for authority / extending democracy and expanding individual opportunity, creating social order
· missionaries tried to educate the Indians, encouraged assimilation
o many remained outside of reformers’ reach
· Result : highest literacy rates of any nation of the world
(Rehabilitation)
· network of charitable activities – “Benevolent Empire”
o Perkins School for the Blind (Boston)
· Dorothea Dix (MA) : prison reforms
o to reform and rehabilitate criminals
· Native Americans “reservation”
o relocation to move Native Americans out of the way
o for assimilation
o “the great work of regenerating the Indian race”
(The Rise of Feminism)
· Sarah and Angelina Grimke : participated in abolitionist movements
· Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stow, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Dorothea Dix : did something the society didn’t “permit” women to do
· 1840 : female delegates were rejected in participation in London World Antislavery Convention
· 1848 : Seneca Falls (NY) – convention for women’s rights
o suffrage gained in 1920
· Quakers : gender equality and tolerance for female preachers and community leaders
· issues of women’s rights were second to abolitionism
[The Crusade Against Slavery]
- 1830 : began to gather its force
(Early Opposition to Slavery)
· calm and genteel, expressing moral disapproval
· 1817 : a group of prominent white Virginians – American Colonization Society (ACS)
o gradual freeing slaves -> slaves sent to Liberia (1830 -> 1846, became an independent state)
· failure : expensive price, too gradual, and African Americans had no intention to migrate
(Garrison and Abolitionism)
· 1831 : William Lloyd Garrison (MA), founded Liberator
o principle : abolitionists must focus on slavery’s damages to blacks but not evil influence of it to whites
o reject “gradualism”
· NE Antislavery Society (1832) -> 1833, Convention in Philadelphia
(Black Abolitionists)
· although agreed with white -> separated from whites
· David Walker (free black) moved from NC to Boston, published a pamphlet “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World”
o harsh content : slavery = eternal sin / slaves should “kill or be killed”
· Sojourner Truth (free black) : spokeswoman of antislavery in 1830s
· Fredrick Douglass (runaway slave -> later bought his freedom from Maryland master)
o great orator
o founded antislavery newspaper North Star (Rochester, NY)
o Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
o demanded not only freedom but full social and economic equality
(Anti-Abolitionism)
· White Southerners + some Northerners
o some feared the abolitionism would lead to a destructive civil war
o some feared free Blacks would take up their jobs
· 1834 : a mob in Philadelphia attacked abolitionist headquarters
· 1835 : seized Garrison and threatened to hang him; Garrison saved by being locked in jail
· Elijah Lovejoy killed when trying to defend his press from attack
· -> strong-willed, passionate crusaders
(Abolitionism Divided)
· mid-1830s : violence of the anti-abolitionists
· radicalism provoked by Garrison
o attacked constitution as “an agreement with hell”)
o divided from American Antislavery Society on the issues of women’s participations
o 1843 : a call of disunion from South
· Amistad (1839-1841) : Africans destined to be slaves in Cuba revolted and seized the ship -> tried to go back to Africa -> U.S. navy seized the ships as pirates -> court declared Africans free (because slave trade by then was illegal)
· Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) : states need not aid in enforcing the 1793 fugitive act
· Washington D.C. – free state and banned interstate slave trade
· Liberty Party (1840) – James G. Birney
o free soil : keeping slavery out of the territories
o welfare of blacks / some just wanted West for whites
· John Brown – Kansas and Virginia
· Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
o inspired abolitionism to those who didn’t care
o sectionalism
- American literature and arts were regarded inferior than any Europeans’
- romanticism <- derived from Europe
- Central Theme : liberation of the human spirit
· literature, philosophy, politics and economics
(Nationalism and Romanticism in American Painting)
· naturalism – yearning for “wild nature”
o Hudson River School – artist school in NY
o portray of Hudson Valley
· later move to Yosemite Valley, Yellowstone, the Rocky Mountains
(An American Literature)
· 1820s : James Fenimore Cooper – evocation of the American West, ideal of independent individual with a natural inner goodness
o The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
o The Deerslayer (1841)
· Walt Whitman – democracy, the liberation of the individual spirit, and the pleasures of the flesh / yearning for emotional and physical release and personal fulfillment
o poetry, Leaves of Grass (1855)
· Herman Melville – tragedy of pride and revenge, courage and of the strength of human will
o Moby Dick (1851)
(Literature in the Antebellum South)
· Edgar Allen Poe – individual rising above the narrow confines of intellect and exploring the deeper world of the spirit and the emotions
o The Raven (1845)
· Beverly Tucker, William Alexander Caruthers, John Pendleton Kennedy – Romance and eulogies for the plantation system of the upper South
· William Gilmore Simms – nationalism, but esoteric to South
· Augustus B. Longstreet, Joseph G. Baldwin, Johnson J. Hooper – realists -> established Southern humors/ world of backwoods south and focused on ordinary people, poor whites
(The Transcendentalists)
· transcendentalist – NE writers and philosophers
o influenced by German and English writers and philosophers
· individualism : reasons & understanding <-> innate capacity (expression of emotion) vs. society’s requirement ß goal : liberate from “understanding”
· Concord, Massachusetts
· led by : Ralph Waldo Emerson
o Nature (1836) : self-fulfillment must be obtained through communion with the natural world
· influential : Henry David Thoreau
o Walden (1854) every individual should work for self-realization by resisting pressures of society
o Resistance to Civil Government (1849) : when government’s requirement violated an individual’s morality, then the government had no legitimate authority -> “civil disobedience” or “passive resistance” – public refusal to obey unjust laws
(The Defense of Nature)
· fear of Capitalist enthusiasm upon nature
· to transcendentalists : nature = source of deep, personal human inspiration
· essential unity between humanity and nature (spiritual unity)
(Visions of Utopia)
· Brook Farm (1841), West Roxbury, Massachusetts, by George Ripley : individuals would together create a new society for self-realization
o share equal labor and leisure
o dissolved in 1847
· Nathaniel Hawthorne – searching for Brook Farm
o The Blithedale Romance (1852), Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of Seven Gables (1851)
o tragedy of individuals cutting themselves under the rule of society
o egotism : the “serpent” of the heart of human misery
· New Harmony (1825), Indiana, by Robert Owen: “Village of Cooperation”
o every resident worked and lived in total equality
o economic failure
(Redefining Gender Role)
· Oneida Community (1848), upstate NY, by John Humphrey Noyes : “perfectionists” <- rejected traditional notions of family and marriage
o liberation of women from males’ demand
· Shakers (1770s), by Mother Ann Lee -> grew in Northeast and Northwest in the 1840s
o commitment to complete celibacy
o endorsed gender equality
(The Mormons)
· Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, began in NY, by Joseph Smith
· 1831 : began searching for new community of “saints” (called themselves “Latter-day Saints”
· introduced polygamy
· Missouri -> Ohio -> Illinois (Nauvoo Town), 1840s
o generally economically successful
o Smith ordered his followers to attack offending press -> Smith jailed -> was shot to death -> successor : Bringham Young
· Young travelled across Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains
o settled in Utah (including present day Salt Lake City)
· Reflection of human perfectibility, haven for demoralized people by the disorder and uncertainty of the outside world (economic marginal people)
[Remaking Society]
- new movements to remake mainstream society
(Revivalism, Morality, and Order)
· Second Great Awakening (1820s ~ )
· New Light – every individual was capable of salvation through is or her own efforts
· revivalism : crusade against personal immorality, in large scale
o drunkenness <- excess use of alcohol = crime, disorder, and poverty
o women : no money, and drunken husbands often abused them
· Temperance – many nativists believed that it was the cause of immigrants
o 1840 : a major national movement
(Health, Science, and Phrenology)
· cholera epidemics of 1830s and 1840s -> high death rate
· “water cure” (hydrotherapy)
· Sylvester Graham (Connecticut) : promoted eating vegetable, fruits, and bread made out of coarse grains
· phrenology (first from Germany) 1830s
o Orson and Lorenzo Fowler – Phrenology Almanac
o shape of individual’s skull = character and intelligence
(Medical Science)
· 1830s and 1840s : many opposed licensing of physicians (thought as a form of undemocratic monopoly) <- prestige of the profession remained low
· lacked knowledge on disease
· Edward Jenner – vaccination against smallpox (adapted from folk practices)
· William Morton – anesthetics (using sulphuric ether)
o John Warren – used sulphuric ether to sedate surgical patients
· most traditional surgeons and others mistrusted innovations and experimentation
· Oliver Wendell Holmes (1843) – discovery of infection
(Education)
· for universal public education
o 1830 : no such a system -> interest began growing rapidly
· Horace Mann (first secretary of the MA Board of Education) : education is essential for preserving democracy (since educated can be voted as electorates)
o established MA school system
o lengthened academic year to six months
o doubled teachers’ salaries
o broadened the curriculum
· other states followed
o creating teachers’ colleges
o principle of tax-supported elementary schools
· education system and quality varied from states to states
o East : no education access (due to dispersed population)
o South : all Africans barred from education, and 1/3 whites enrolled
o North : 72% enrolled
· moral education, discipline, respect for authority / extending democracy and expanding individual opportunity, creating social order
· missionaries tried to educate the Indians, encouraged assimilation
o many remained outside of reformers’ reach
· Result : highest literacy rates of any nation of the world
(Rehabilitation)
· network of charitable activities – “Benevolent Empire”
o Perkins School for the Blind (Boston)
· Dorothea Dix (MA) : prison reforms
o to reform and rehabilitate criminals
· Native Americans “reservation”
o relocation to move Native Americans out of the way
o for assimilation
o “the great work of regenerating the Indian race”
(The Rise of Feminism)
· Sarah and Angelina Grimke : participated in abolitionist movements
· Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stow, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Dorothea Dix : did something the society didn’t “permit” women to do
· 1840 : female delegates were rejected in participation in London World Antislavery Convention
· 1848 : Seneca Falls (NY) – convention for women’s rights
o suffrage gained in 1920
· Quakers : gender equality and tolerance for female preachers and community leaders
· issues of women’s rights were second to abolitionism
[The Crusade Against Slavery]
- 1830 : began to gather its force
(Early Opposition to Slavery)
· calm and genteel, expressing moral disapproval
· 1817 : a group of prominent white Virginians – American Colonization Society (ACS)
o gradual freeing slaves -> slaves sent to Liberia (1830 -> 1846, became an independent state)
· failure : expensive price, too gradual, and African Americans had no intention to migrate
(Garrison and Abolitionism)
· 1831 : William Lloyd Garrison (MA), founded Liberator
o principle : abolitionists must focus on slavery’s damages to blacks but not evil influence of it to whites
o reject “gradualism”
· NE Antislavery Society (1832) -> 1833, Convention in Philadelphia
(Black Abolitionists)
· although agreed with white -> separated from whites
· David Walker (free black) moved from NC to Boston, published a pamphlet “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World”
o harsh content : slavery = eternal sin / slaves should “kill or be killed”
· Sojourner Truth (free black) : spokeswoman of antislavery in 1830s
· Fredrick Douglass (runaway slave -> later bought his freedom from Maryland master)
o great orator
o founded antislavery newspaper North Star (Rochester, NY)
o Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
o demanded not only freedom but full social and economic equality
(Anti-Abolitionism)
· White Southerners + some Northerners
o some feared the abolitionism would lead to a destructive civil war
o some feared free Blacks would take up their jobs
· 1834 : a mob in Philadelphia attacked abolitionist headquarters
· 1835 : seized Garrison and threatened to hang him; Garrison saved by being locked in jail
· Elijah Lovejoy killed when trying to defend his press from attack
· -> strong-willed, passionate crusaders
(Abolitionism Divided)
· mid-1830s : violence of the anti-abolitionists
· radicalism provoked by Garrison
o attacked constitution as “an agreement with hell”)
o divided from American Antislavery Society on the issues of women’s participations
o 1843 : a call of disunion from South
· Amistad (1839-1841) : Africans destined to be slaves in Cuba revolted and seized the ship -> tried to go back to Africa -> U.S. navy seized the ships as pirates -> court declared Africans free (because slave trade by then was illegal)
· Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) : states need not aid in enforcing the 1793 fugitive act
· Washington D.C. – free state and banned interstate slave trade
· Liberty Party (1840) – James G. Birney
o free soil : keeping slavery out of the territories
o welfare of blacks / some just wanted West for whites
· John Brown – Kansas and Virginia
· Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1852)
o inspired abolitionism to those who didn’t care
o sectionalism
