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AN AMERICAN CULTURE
Chapter 11
The American Nation, 12e Mark. C. Carnes and John A. Garraty©2006 Pearson Education, Inc.
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IN SEARCH OF NATIVE GROUNDS
• Early 19th century literary groups set out to encourage creation of purely American literature– Anthology Club, Boston– Friendly Club, New York
• Before 1830, only James Fenimore Cooper made successful use of national heritage—romanticized view of frontier life, of Indians, and settlers– The Spy (1821)– The Pioneers (1823)– The Last of the Mohicans (1826)
• Marked shift from classicism of 18th century which emphasized reason and orderliness to romanticism of early 19th century with its stress on highly subjective emotional values and its concern for the beauties of nature and the freedom of the individual
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IN SEARCH OF NATIVE GROUNDS
• Novels grew with readership which was increasingly middle class women– Catherine M. Sedgwick chronicled simple virtues of home
and family in A New England Tale (1822) and Redwood (1824)
– Many early novelists slavishly imitated British writers• Sentimental novels• Satirical writers• Historical novels
• New York was literary capital– Leading light was Washington Irving, who abandoned U.S.
for Europe
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AMERICAN PAINTING
• American painting reached a level comparable to European work, but most artists trained in Europe– Benjamin West, went to Europe before Revolution and
never returned– John Singleton Copley, Bostonian– Charles Wilson Peale, settled in Philadelphia and had a
brood of talented children– Gilbert Stuart, portrait painter
• Less obviously imitative than literature was but unmistakably in European tradition
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THE ROMANTIC VIEW OF LIFE
• Romantics believed that change and growth were the essence of life for both individuals and institutions– Valued feeling and intuition over pure thought– Stressed the differences between individuals
and societies rather than the similarities– Had an ardent love of country– Ascribed to individualism, optimism,
ingenuousness, and emotion– Believed good people went to heaven
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TRANSCENDENTALISM
• New England creation• Emphasized indefinable and unknowable• Mystical intuitive way of looking at life that
subordinated facts to feelings• Human beings were truly divine because they
were part of nature which was the essence of divinity
• Could “transcend” reason by having faith in themselves and in the fundamental benevolence of the universe
• Complete individualists who did not believe in institutions
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EMERSON AND THOREAU
Ralph Waldo Emerson (b.1803)• Restored to Unitarianism fervor and purpose• Philosophy was buoyantly optimistic and
rigorously intellectual, self-confident and conscientious
• Disturbed by industrial society• Favored change and believed in progress• Disliked powerful governments but believed in
strong leadership
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EMERSON AND THOREAU
Henry David Thoreau• Disliked scramble for wealth• Objected to society’s restrictions on the
individual• 1845 built a cabin on Walden Pond and lived
there for two years• A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
(1849) and Walden (1854)• Refused to pay Massachusetts poll tax to protest
Mexican-American war and was jailed for a night (until aunt paid tax) and wrote “Civil Disobedience”
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EDGAR ALLAN POE
• Born in Boston in 1809, died at age 40– Neurotic, an alcoholic and occasional user of drugs who
married a child of 13– Obsessed with death and haunted by melancholia and
hallucinations
• An excellent magazine editor, a penetrating critic, a poet of unique talents, and a fine short story writer
• Stories abound with examples of wild imagination and fascination with mystery, fright, and the occult
• Perfected the detective story, one of first to deal with science fiction themes, and master of horror stories
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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
• Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804
• Disliked egotism of transcendentalism and rejected its bland optimism
• Fascinated by past, especially puritan heritage of New England and its continuing influence
• Active in politics• Twice-told Tales (1837); The Scarlet
Letter (1850); The House of Seven Gables (1851)
A
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HERMAN MELVILLE
• Born 1819 in New York• Typee (1846): account of life in Marquesas
and sequel, Omoo (1847)• Studied Shakespeare, rejected optimism,
liked Emerson but was not a transcendentalist, expressed sympathy for the Indians and for immigrants
• Redburn (1849)• White-Jacket (1850)• Moby Dick (1851)
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WALT WHITMAN• Born on Long Island in 1819 • Most romantic and distinctly
American writer of his age• Ardent Jacksonian and Free-
soiler• Leaves of Grass (1855)—a
preface and 12 rambling, free verse poems
• Loved to use foreign words and to pose as a rough character despite his sensitive nature
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THE WIDER LITERARY RENAISSANCE
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow– “The Village Blacksmith”– “Paul Revere’s Ride”– The Courtship of Miles Standish– The Song of Hiawatha– Poetry lacked profundity, originality and force
• John Greenleaf Whittier—poet who believed ardently in abolition
• James Russell Lowell—editor of Atlantic Monthly and writer of humorous stories
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HISTORIANS
• George Bancroft—10 volume History of the United States (first volume 1834)
• William Hickling Prescott—History of Spain and Spain’s American empire– Conquest of Mexico (1843)– Conquest of Peru (1847)
• John Lothrop Motley—Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856)
• Francis Parkman—Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851)• Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes—poet and essayist
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SOUTHERN LITERATURE
• John Pendleton Kennedy (Baltimore)—novels with regional historical themes
• William Gilmore Simms (South Carolina)—two dozen novels, several volumes of poetry and a number of biographies– The Partisan (1835)– The Yemassee (1835)
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DOMESTIC TASTES
• Charles Bulfinch and domestic architecture – “Federal” style
• New Technology– Weave colored patterns into cloth by machine– Manufacture wallpaper printed with complicated
designs– Produce rugs and hangings that looked liked
tapestry
• Unfortunate effect was overstuffed parlors
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DOMESTIC TASTES• Wood turning machinery added to popularity of
“Gothic” style of architecture• Increasing purchase of native art
– George Catlin– William Sydney Mount– George Caleb Bingham– Asher B. Durand– John Kensett– Thomas Cole
• American Art-Union formed in New York 1839 which sold tickets for art prizes (outlawed 1851)
• Currier and Ives prints popular in 1850s
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EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY• Most children, except in the South, between the
ages of 5 and 10 attended school for at least a couple a months of the year
• School attendance changed with the rise of the common school movement– Belief that a government based on democratic rule
must diffuse knowledge throughout people– Led to free, tax-supported schools which all students
were expected to attend– Educational system came to be administered on a
statewide basis– Teaching became a profession that required formal
training
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EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACYLeaders of common school movement• Shared unquenchable faith in the
improvability of human race through education
• Henry Barnard—educational posts in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and was editor of American Journal of Education
• Horace Mann drafted 1837 Massachusetts law creating a state school board and then carried common schools to every corner of the land
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EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY• By the 1850s every state outside the South provided
free elementary schools and supported institutions for training teachers
• Many built high schools; Michigan and Iowa even established publicly supported colleges
• Success?– Provide trained and well disciplined workers– Designed to “Americanize” immigrant workers– Reformers favored public elementary schools on the theory
they would instill the values of hard work, punctuality, and submissiveness to authority in children of the laboring classes
– They brought Americans of different economic circumstances and ethnic backgrounds into early and mutual contact
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READING AND THE DISSEMINATION OF CULTURE
• As population grew and became more concentrated and was permeated by “middle class” point of view, popular concern for “culture” increased
• New machines of industrialization tended to make the artifacts of culture more stereotyped
• Cost of books, magazines, and newspapers decreased– Penny newspapers started in 1833 with New York
Sun– Depended on sensation, crime stories, and society
gossip
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READING AND THE DISSEMINATION OF CULTURE
• 1850s moralistic and sentimental “domestic” novel entered its prime– Most successful writers were women
• Susan Warner: The Wide, Wide World (1850)• Maria Cummins: The Lamplighter (1854)
• Religious literature also had a big market– 1840 American Tract Society distributed 3 million copies
of its publications– 1855 distributed 12 million
• Self-improvement books also big sellers– Some aimed at uplifting character– Some simply taught one how to do things
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READING AND THE DISSEMINATION OF CULTURE
• Philanthropists contributed large sums to charity and other good causes– Stephen Girard: $6 million to educate poor, white, orphan
boys– John Jacob Astor & George Peabody endowed libraries– John Lowell left $500,000 to sponsor free public lectures– Peter Cooper founded Cooper Union where workers
could take free courses on practical subjects
• Mechanics’ libraries sprang up everywhere• Following Massachusetts, several states
encouraged local communities to found tax-supported libraries
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READING AND THE DISSEMINATION OF CULTURE
• Mutual improvement societies—lyceums– Began in Great Britain– Josiah Holbrook founded
first in U.S. in 1826– Within 5 years over 1,000– Conducted discussions,
established libraries, lobbied for better schools, sponsored lectures
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THE STATE OF THE COLLEGES
Private Colleges• Too many of them• Many short lived• Too few students
– Charged too much for average family– Accepted students as young as 11 and 12 and as old
as 30
• Grades were not given, class work was considered unimportant, and discipline was lax
• Curriculum was heavy with Latin and Greek and had little practical relevance except for ministers
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THE STATE OF THE COLLEGES
• Move to revamp curriculum– More courses in science, economics, modern history,
and applied mathematics
• Yale established separate school of science in 1847
• Harvard started using grades• Colleges in West and South began offering
mechanical and agricultural subjects• Women
– Oberlin enrolled 4 female students in 1837– Georgia Female College opened in 1839
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CIVIC CULTURES
East Coast highlights
• By 1825 New York’s House of Harper was the largest book publisher in the nation
• Boston was the home of the nation’s leading historians
• Philadelphia with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Philadelphia Academy of Music predominated in artistic and music matters
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CIVIC CULTURES
• Washington, DC, was a cultural backwater• Boston, Philadelphia, and New York vied
for primacy• Lawyers were seen as arbiters of taste in
literature and art• Magazines:
– North American Review, Boston, 1815: leading literary magazine
– Graham’s, first illustrated magazine– Godey’s Ladies Book: reached 150,000
subscribers in the 1850s
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CIVIC CULTURES
• In the West– Cincinnati had 7 weekly and 2 daily magazines,
a literary monthly, a medical journal, and a magazine for teenagers
• Smaller cities– Portland, Providence, Hartford, Albany, and
Pittsburgh had literary and natural history societies and were regular stops on the lyceum lecture circuit
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AMERICAN HUMOR
• Juxtaposition of high ideals and low reality
• Seba Smith, newspaperman from Portland, Maine
• Augustus Baldwin Longstreet chronicled violence figures
• 1830s and 1840s, Davy Crockett Almanacs provided outrageous and ribald tales about frontier life
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WEBSITES
• America’s First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1862
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/daghtml/daghome.html • The Era of the Mountain Menhttp://www.xmission.com/~drudy/amm.html • Edgar Allen Poehttp://www.eapoe.org/index.html • Eastern State Penitentiary Official Homepagehttp://www.easternstate.com/index.html
