Chapter 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture
- 3rd revolution, in addition to reformation of politics and economy in 1850s.
o Commitment to improve character, make them more upstanding, God-fearing, literate.
§ Motivated by harsh realities of politics and exclusion of women from political game.
§ Also boosted by religious reform, most reforms motivated by 2nd Great Awakening which began in late 1790s.
- Reform campaigns flourished
o Was not a “reading man” who was without some scheme for a new utopia in his “waistcoat pocket” claimed Ralph Waldo Emerson.
o Promoted better schools, rights for women.
o Promoted medicines, both polygamy (married to more than one) and celibacy (unmarried) and guidance by spirits.
o Societies formed against alcohol, tobacco, profanity, mailing on Sabbath.
o Most important was against slavery.
Reviving Religion
- Religion already a heavy influence in America
o Church attendance regular for ¾ of 23 mil Americans in 1850
o Alexis de Tocqueville declared there was “no country in the world where Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America”
- HV religion has changed from old-time religion of colonial days
o Serious Calvinism in American Churches
o Rationalist ideas from French Revolutionary era softened old orthodoxy.
- Paine’s The Age of Reason (1794) shockingly declared that all churches were “set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit”
o American anticlericalism seldom so virulent, yet many Founding Fathers (Jefferson + Franklin) were Deists.
§ Relied on reason rather than revelation, science rather than the Bible.
§ Rejected concept of original sin, denied Christ’s divinity.
§ HV also believed in Supreme Being
- Deists helped inspire spin-off from severe Puritanism of paste: the Unitarian faith
o Began to gather momentum in 1800s
o Believed that God existed in one person and not in orthodox Trinity (God the father, the Son, the Holy Spirit)
§ Denied the deity (supernatural being) of Jesus but also stressed goodness of human nature
§ Proclaimed possibility of salvation through good works, pictured God as loving Father.
§ Embraced by leading thinkers (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
§ Appealed to mostly intellectuals whose rationalism and optimism contrasted from hellfires of Calvinism (esp. predestination and human depravity)
- Boiling reaction against growing liberalism in religion started 1800 (Against Deism or Calvinists?)
o Revivalists, beginning from southern frontier but soon into Northeast
o 2nd Great Awakening swept even more people than 1st Great Awakening
§ One of most momentous episodes in the history of American religion.
§ Left countless converted souls, shattered and reorganized churches, numerous new sects.
§ Encouraged evangelicalism through prison reform, temperance, women’s movement, crusade to abolish slavery.
- Spread to frontier by huge “camp meetings”
o Up to 25,000 for several days gather to “get religion”
o Many of “saved” backslide into former sinful ways, but revivals boosted church membership and stimulated variety of humanitarian ferosm.
- Methodists and Baptists gained most.
o Both sects stressed personal conversion (contrary to predestination)
o Relatively democratic control of church affairs.
o Rousing emotionalism.
o Peter Cartwright best known of Methodist “circuit riders” (traveling frontier preaches)
§ Ill-educated but sinewy (showing strength) called upon sinners to repent
- Charles Finney was greatest of revival preachers.
o Held huge crowds w/ power of his oratory pungency (sharpness) of his message.
§ Led mass revivals in NYC 1830 and 1832.
o Preached version of old-time religion, but also innovater (person w/ new idea)
§ Devised “anxious bench” were repentant sinners could sit in full view of congregation
§ Encouraged women to pray aloud in public
§ Denounced alcohol and slavery.
o Eventually to be President of Oberlin College Ohio, source of revivalist activity and abolitionism.
- Key feature of 2nd Great Awakening was feminization of religion, both through church membership and theology.
o Middle-class women made up majority of new church members.
o Women’s greater ambivalence (holding of two opposite feelings) than men about the changes wrought by the expanding market economy made them such eager converts to piety (reverence towards God).
§ Evangelicals preached gospel of female spiritual worth
§ Offered women active role in bringing families to God
o AR women forced host of benevolent/charitable organization.
o Spearheaded most if not all of era’s ambitious reforms.
Denominational Diversity
- Revivals furthered fragmentation of religious faiths.
o Western NY where descendants of NE Puritans settled, had many sermonizes preaching hellfire that it was the “Burned-Over District”
o MW Millerites or Adventists rose from Burned-Over region in 1830s.
§ Named after commanding William Miller
§ Interpreted Bible to mean that Christ would return in 1844
· Failure to dampened but did not destroy movement.
- Like 1st GA, 2nd GA widened lines b/w classes and religions.
o Prosperous and conservatives denominations in East little touched by revivalism.
§ AR Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians cont rise from wealthier levels of society.
o Methodists, Baptists and other new sects support from less “learned “ communities in the rural South and West.
- Issue of slavery split many denominations
o By 1845 southern Baptists and southern Methodists split w/ northern brothers.
o By 1857 Presbyterians North and South parted.
- First churches split, then political parties split, then the Union split.
A Desert Zion in Utah
- 1830 in Burned-Over District Joseph Smith reported he had received some golden plates from an angel.
o When deciphered, constituted Book of Mormon
o Formed Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons)
§ A native American religion.
- Opposition from non-Mormon neighbors
o In Ohio, MO, and IL
o Rasped (grated on feelings) of union members and members in groups who were individualistic and dedicated to free enterprise.
o Antagonized by voting as a unit and openly drilling militia for defensive purpose.
§ Accusations of polygamy increased in intensity for Joseph Smith.
- 1844 Joseph Smith and brother murdered by mob and Mormon Moses Brigham Young led Mormons to Utah to escape persecution.
o Aggressive leader, gifted admin.
o Mormons made Utah desert bloom through irrigation.
o 1848 Crops threatened by crickets were saved when flocks of gulls appeared.
§ Many Mormons in 1850s eventually completed 1300 mile trek to Utah.
- Under Brigham Young, community prospered as theocracy and cooperative commonwealth.
o Polygamy common, and population further swelled due to European immigrants and Mormons’ missionary movement on them.
o HV 1850 Brigham Young made territorial governor
§ AR federal army marched in 1857 against Mormons
§ HV w/o serious bloodshed quarrel adjusted
· Later Mormons would run afoul of antipolygamy laws passed by Congress in 1862, 1882
· Unique martial customs delayed Utah statehood until 1896.
Free Schools for a Free People
- Tax-supported primary schools scarce in early years.
o Were often very poor
o AR advocates of “free” public education met stiff opposition.
o HV conservative Americans saw that if they did not educate others, the “other folkses brats” would grow up as a dangerous, ignorant mob armed with vote.
- TF education triumphed b/w 1825 – 1850
o Lagged in slavery South.
- Most important was gaining of manhood suffrage for whites in Jackson’s day.
o Free vote cried aloud for free education.
o Where “a civilized nation that was both ignorant and free never was and never will be”.
- HV schools often stayed open only a few months of the year.
o Schoolteachers often ill trained, ill tempered, ill paid.
o Frequently hit more than taught.
- Usually taught only the “three Rs” – “readin’, riting’ and ‘rithmetic”
- AR Horace Mann secretary of MA Board of Education campaigned effectively for more and better schoolhouses, longer school terms, higher pay for teachers, and an expanded curriculum.
o HV education remained an expensive luxury for many communities.
- 1860 nation had 100 public secondary schools
o Had nearly 1,000,000 white adult illiterates.
o MW black slaves in South legally forbidden to learn to read or write
o Free blacks North and South usually excluded from schools.
- Education advances improved by textbooks, notably of Noah Webster.
o Webster aka “Schoolmaster of the Republic”?
o “reading lessons” used by millions of children in 1800s designed to promote patriotism.
o 1828 Published famous dictionary which helped to standardize American language.
- William H. McGuffey, a teacher-preacher
o 1830s McGuffey’s Reader memorable lessons in morality, patriotism and idealism.
§ Sold 122 million copies in following decades.
Higher Goals for Higher Learning
- Second Great Awakening led to planting many small, denominational, liberal arts colleges chiefly in South and West.
o HV often est. to satisfy local pride than to advance cause of learning.
o Offered narrow curriculum of Latin, Greek, mathematics and moral philosophy.
- First state-supported universities in South NC 1795.
o Federal land grants nourished growth of state institutions of higher learning.
o University of Virginia 1819
o Designed by Thomas Jefferson and dedicated university to freedom from religious or political restrains, modern languages and emphasis on the sciences.
- MW Women’s higher education frowned upon in the early decades of 1800s.
o Women’s place believed to be at home, believed to need to be over dependent.
o Also believed that education injured feminine brain, undermined health, rendered lady unfit for marriage.
- HV women’s schools at secondary level began to emerge in 1820s thanks to Emma Willard.
o 1821 est. Troy (NY) Female Seminary
o 1837 Oberlin College opened to women and men and black students.
o MW Mary Lyon est. outstanding women’s school Mount Holyoke Seminary (later College)
- MW development of more tax-supported libraries.
o House-to-house peddlers also sold books
o Traveling lecturers taught masses through lyceum lecture associations
§ Reached 3000 by 1835.
§ Provided platforms for speakers in science, lit, moral philosophy.
§ Included talkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson.
- Flourishing of magazines, though most of them short lived.
o North American Review 1815, long lived reader of the intellectuals.
o Godey’s Lady’s Book 1830-1898 attained large circulation esp among women.
An Age of Reform
- Most reformists were intelligent, inspired idealists usually inspired by religion.
o Optimistic promises of 2nd GA inspired many to battle earthly evils.
o Renewed old Puritan vision of a perfected society
§ A society free from cruelty, war, intoxicating drink, discrimination, and ultimately slavery.
o Also motivated to reaffirm traditional values in forces of a market economy.
§ Middle class unaware that industrial era posed new problems and called for novel ideas.
§ AR reformers applied conventional virtue to older order while events required them to have novel ideas.
- MW women prominent in reform crusades, esp for suffrage.
o Provided opportunity to escape confines of home.
- Imprisonment for debt massive problem, often jailed for owing less than a dollar.
o 1830 hundreds of penniless people in prisons
o HV as the people gained power through votes, state legislatures gradually abolished debtor’s prisons.
§ MW criminal codes softened, # of capital offenses down, brutal punishments slowly eliminated.
§ Ideas of correcting as well as punish formed, such as “penitentiaries”
- HV insane people suffered from medieval concept that they were cursed w/ unclean spirits.
o 1800 believed they were willfully perverse.
o AR would be chained in jails w/ sane people.
o Dorothea Dix traveled 60,000 miles in 8 years to spread reports on insanity from first-hand observations.
§ Petition to MA legislature 1843 + persistence resulted in improved conditions and boosted concept that demented were not willfully perverse.
- Agitation for peace and security linked with European counterpart.
o 1828 American Peace Society formed.
o Ringing declaration of war on war.
o Led by William Ladd, but led to forming some international organizations
§ Set back by bloodshed of Crimean War in Europe and Civil War in America
The Demon Rum – The “Old Deluder”
- Custom and monotonous life led to excessive drinking of hard liquor
o Included women, clergymen, and members of Congress.
o Fouled weddings, funerals, efficiency of labor, machinery operation, accidents in work, sanctity of the family, spiritual welfare
o Also fouled physical safety of women and children.
- AR 1826 American Temperance Society formed
o Few thousand local groups created.
o Organized children’s clubs, implored drinkers to sign temperance pledge, were the “Cold Water Army”
§ Made effective use of pictures, pamphlets.
§ Most popular anti-alcohol tract was T.S. Arthur’s Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There (1854)
· Described in shocking detail how once happy village ruined by drinking.
§ Second to Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as bestseller in 1850s.
- Attacks against the “Demon Drink”
o Stiffen individual’s will to resist alcohol.
§ Stressed temperance.
§ Some believed legislation should remove temptation.
§ Neal S. Dow prominent in this group – would lose much money due to laborers drunk.
§ AR aka “Father of Prohibition” sponsored the Maine Law of 1851
· Hailed as “the law of Heaven Americanized”
· Prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor.
§ Other Northern states followed and by 1857 passed various prohibitory laws.
· HV some of statues decade later repealed or declared unconstitutional.
§ Would be impossible to cure drinking problem as public sentiment hostile.
o HV by eve of Civil War, prohibitionists achieved much less drinking among women than in early 1800s and much less per capita consumption of hard liquor.
Women in Revolt
- In early 1800 wife still subordinate
o Like black slaves, could not vote, could be legally beaten by her lord “with a reasonable instrument”
o When married, could not retain title to property; passed to her husband.
- HV American women better off than European women.
o French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville where in America rape was one of few crimes punishable by death where in France it was punished lightly.
- MW contemporary women about 10% avoided marriage altogether and remained “spinsters” during Civil War.
- MW burgeoning market economy increasingly separating women and men into sharply distinct economic roles.
o Women thought to be physically and emotionally weak, but artistic and refined.
o Were keepers of society’s conscience
§ Responsibility to teach young how to be good and productive citizens of the Republic.
o Men considered to be in danger of slipping into savage or beastly life if not guided by ladies.
- Home was woman’s special sphere, centerpiece of the “cult of domesticity”
o Reformers like Catharine Beecher urged sisters to seek employment as teachers.
§ MW endlessly celebrated role of good homemaker
o HV many women also eager to get out of staying in home.
- Female reformers, mostly rich whites, began to gather strength in 1850s beyond.
o Demanded rights for women and joined in general reforms of temperance and abolition of slavery.
o Like men, inspired by religion that offered promise of earthly reward for human endeavor.
- Prominent women reformers.
o Lucretia Mott, Quaker
§ 1840 went into antislavery convention and not recognized.
o Elizabeth Cady Stanton who insists on leaving “obey” out of her marriage ceremony.
§ Advocated suffrage for women.
o Susan B. Anthony lecturer for women’s rights.
§ Exposed her to vulgar epithets (people)
§ Progressive women everywhere called “Suzy Bs”
o Elizabeth Blackwell
§ First female graduate of medical college (previously forbidden profession to women)
o Margaret Fuller
§ Edited a transcendentalist journals The Dial
§ Took part in struggle to bring unity and republican gov to Italy.
o Grimke Sisters Sarah and Angelina
§ Notable for against slavery
o Lucy Stone kept maiden name and latter-day “Lucy Stoners” would follow example.
o Amelia Bloomer revolted against female attire.
- Fighting feminists met at Seneca Falls NY in Women’s Rights Convention 1848
o Stanton read a “Declaration of Sentiments” which in spirit of Dec. of Indep declared “all men and women are created equal”
o Resolution demanded for ballot for females.
o Launched the modern women’s rights movement.
- While campaign against slavery eclipsed by crusade for women’s rights, no woman could vote.
o HV women gradually admitted to colleges
o Some states, beginning with Mississippi (MS) 1839 permitted wives to own property after marriage.
Wilderness Utopias
- Bolstered by utopin spirit of age, reformers set up more than 40 communities of cooperative, communistic societies.
- Robert Owen 1825 founded communal society of 1000 people in Indiana
o Seeked human betterment.
o Little harmony resulted and colony sank in contradiction and chaos.
- 1841 Brook Farm in Massachusetts
o Of brothers and sisters committed to philosophy of transcendentalism
§ Inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance whose main character modeled on feminist writer Margaret Fuller
o Prospered until 1846 when large new communal building burned by fire.
o AR whole venture in “plain living and high thinking” collapsed in death.
- Oneida Community
o 1848 New York founded by John Humphrey Noyes
o Practiced free love “complex marriage”, control and eugenic selection of parents to produce superior offspring.
o Flourished due to artisans making superior steel traps and Oneida Community Plate.
- Many communistic experiments attempted but failed due to competition w/ democratic free enterprise and free land.
o Longest living were Shakers
§ Led by Mother Ann Lee
§ 1770s began to set up a score of religious communities.
o HV monastic (pertaining to monasteries) customs prohibited marriage and sexual relations.
o AR extinct by 1940
The Dawn of Scientific Achievement
- More interested in practical gadgets than pure science
o Jefferson won gold medal for new type of plow.
o Nathaniel Bowditch mathematician, wrote of practical navigation
o Matthew Maury on ocean winds and currents.
§ Writers promoted safety, speed and economy.
- As for actual science, Americans best known for borrowing findings of Europeans.
o HV most influential scientist of first half 19th century was Professor Benjamin Silliman
§ Pioneer geologist and chemis.
o Professor Louis Agassiz path-breaking student of biology, emphasis on memory work.
o Professor Asa Gray wrote textbooks that set new standards for clarity and interest
- Bird scientists
o John J. Audubon painted wild fowl in natural habitat > Birds of America
§ Audubon Society for protection of birds named after him
- Medicine in America still primitive by modern standards
o HV Some steady growth
o Smallpox plagues and yellow fevers (yellow fever epidemic of 1793) still around
o Life expectancy short as for one born in 1850
§ 40 years for white person
§ Less for blacks.
o Suffering from decayed/ulcerated teeth prominent > “cured” by blacksmith.
- Self-prescribed patent medicines common (one dose for people, two for horses)
o Use of medicine by regular doctors and people often harmful.
o Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes declared 1860 “if the medicines were thrown into the sea, humans would be better off and the fish worse off”
o Surgery incl. stiff drink of whiskey and then swift cutting.
§ HV 1840s several American doctors working independently, developed laughing gas and ether as anesthetics.
Artistic Achievements
- Architecture followed European models due to pressure to erect structures in haste
o 1820-1850 Greek revival stimulated by Greeks in 1820s to wrest independence from Turks.
- Jefferson probably ablest American architect of his generation.
o Brought a classical design to his home Monticello.
o Quadrangle University of Virginia another of Jefferson’s creation.
- MW art of painting handicapped
o No wealthy class to pay for them and too much hustling and bustling
o AR painters forced to go to England.
§ America exported artists, imported art.
- Theatre likewise suffered from Puritan prejudice that art was a sinful waste of time.
o John Adams: “he would not give a sixpence for a bust of Phidias or a painting by Raphael”
- HV competent artists emerged
o Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale famous for their portraits of Washington.
o John Trumbull, veteran of Revolutionary War, recaptured its scenes on canvas
o After War of 1812, painters turned portraits from human to romantic landscapes.
§ MW faced competition from invention of crude photograph daguerreotype perfected 1839 by Frenchman Louis Daguerre.
- Music slowly popularized
o Previously Puritans frowned upon nonreligious singing.
o Rhythemic and nostalgic “darky” tunes popularized by whites, very popular mid-century.
§ “Dixie” later adopted by Confederates as their battle hymn 1859 written
o American minstrel shows special favorites.
o Most famous black songs written by white Stephen C. Foster.
§ Contributed to folk music by capturing spirit of slaves.
The Blossoming of a National Literature
- Pioneering civilization gave little time to literature, most imported/plagiarized from Britain
o “Who reads an American book?” – British critic 1820
o AR focuses on practical essays
§ The Federalist papers by Hamilton, Jay and Madison.
§ Pamphlets incl. Paine’s Common Sense
§ Political orations like masterpieces of Daniel Webster.
§ Non-religious books before 1820 incl Autobiography (1818)
· Narrative a classic in simplicity, clarify, inspirational quality.
- Literature received boost from nationalism from Revolution and esp War of 1812
o By 1820 seaboard areas no longer overdependent on cutting trees and could have time for literature as a profession.
§ Knickerbocker Group in NY enabled literature of America to match landscapes > incl Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Cullen Bryant
o Washington Irving first American to win international recognition as a literary figure.
§ 1809 published Knickerbocker’s History of New York with amusing caricatures (distorted portrait) of the Dutch.
§ 1820 The Sketch Book brought immediate fame home and abroad.
· Used English as well as American themes in Dutch-American tales incl “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of the Sleepy Hollow”
§ Also did much to interpret America to Europe and vice versa
· William Thackeray: “the first ambassador whom the New World of letters sent to the Old.
o James Fenimore Cooper was first American novelist (while Irving was first general writer)
§ The Spy 1821 absorbing tale of American Revolution.
§ Leatherstocking Tales brought most fame
§ The Last of the Mohicans centered on deadeye rifleman Natty Bumppo when he meets Indians.
· Wide sale in Europe, believed that Americans were all pioneers.
· HV Cooper was exploring viability and destiny of America’s republican experiment, contrasting the underfiled values of Native Americans to artificiality of modern civilization.
o Puritan William Cullen Bryant
§ 1817 “Thanatopsis” one of first high quality poems produced in the US
§ Continued to poetry, though forced to make living editing influential New York Evening Post
· Over 50 years set model for journalism that was dignified, liberal and conscientious
The Trumpeters of Transcendentalism
- Golden age in American literature in second quarter of 1800s in outburst in New England
o One reason was transcendentalism
o Esp around Boston, where it became “the Athens of America”
- 1830s Transcendentalism resulted in part from liberalizing straight-jacket Puritan theology.
o Also in part due to German Romantic philosophers and religions of Asia.
o Rejected prevailing theory (from John Locke) that all knowledge comes to the mind through the sense.
§ Where truth “transcends” the senses, and cannot be found by observation alone.
§ Where every person possess an inner light that can put them in direct touch with God or the “Oversoul”
§ In general, defied precise definition.
· HV concrete beliefs where individualism most important, religiously and socially.
· Commitment to self-reliance, self-culture, self-discipline.
- Naturally bred hostility to authority and formal institutions and conventional wisdom.
· Exaltation of individual, black and white.
- Best known transcendentalists
o Ralph Waldo Emerson.
§ Reached audience by pen and platform
§ Favorite as a lyceum lecturer
· Most thrilling was “The American Scholar”
· Was an intellectual declaration of Independence
- Encouraged Americans to throw off European traditions
§ Hailed as poet and philosopher, but more influential as practical philosopher and through essays enriching countless of boring lives.
· Stressed self-reliance, self-improvement, self-confidence, optimism, and freedom.
· Great success as his views reflected those of America.
§ By 1850s outspoken critic of slavery, supported Union cause in Civil War.
o Henry David Thoreau
§ Condemned gov that supported slavery.
· Refused to pay MA poll tax and jailed for a night.
§ Gifted prose writer known for Walden: Or Life in the Woods (1854)
· Record of Thoreau’s life in two years of simple existence.
· Believed he should reduce bodily wants to gain time for pursuit of truth through study and meditation.
§ On the Duty of Civil Disobedience furthered idealistic thought in America and abroad.
· Encouraged Gandhi to resisrt British rule in India and inspired American civil rights leader MLK thinking about nonviolence.
o Walt Whitman
§ Leaves of Grass (1855) famous collection of poems.
· Gained popularity after his death.
· “Poet Laureat of Democracy”
· Caught the enthusiasm of expanding America that had turned its back on Old World.
§ A lot of freedom of expression of “barbaric yawp”, highly romantic, emotional and unconventional.
Glowing Literary Lights
- Other prominent literary figures not associated directly with transcendentalism
o Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
§ One of most popular poets in America.
§ Wrote for the genteel classes,, but also adopted by the less cultured masses
§ European lit supplied him w/ many temes.
· HV most admired poems “Evangeline” “The Song of Hiawatha” “The Courtship of Miles Standish” on American traditions.
§ Very popular in Europe
o Fighting Quaker John Greenleaf Whittier
§ Uncrowned poet laureate of antislavery crusade.
§ Vastly important in influencing social action against inhumanity, injustice and intolerance.
o James Russell Lowell
§ Political satirist in Biglow Papers
· Esp in 1846 dealing w/ Mexican War
· Also against slavery-expansion designs of Polk administration.
o Oliver Wendell Holmes
§ Among literary lights that made Boston a “hub of the universe”
§ “The Last Leaf” poem in honor of the last “white Indian” of the Boston Tea Party (himself)
- Prominent women writers
o Louisa May Alcott and Little Women 1868
o Emily Dickinson explored universal themes of nature, love, death and immortality through poems.
- Most noteworthy literary figure in South before Civil War (unless Edgar Allan Poe a southerner) was William Gilmore Simms
o Themes of South during Revolutionary War
o 82 books, “the Cooper of the South”
Literary Individualists and Dissenters
- Not all literary lights optimistic.
- Edgar Allen Poe
o A very unfortunate life
o Fascinated by ghostly and ghastly and reflected morbid sensibility contrasting w/ optimistic tone of American culture.
§ AR work more popular among Europeans.
- Two writers reflecting continuing Calvinist obsession w/ original sin and never-ending struggle b/w good and evil.
o Nathaniel Hawthorn The Scarlet Letter on Puritan practice forcing adultress to wear scarlet “A” on her clothing.
§ The Marble Farm (1860) on when American artists witness mysterious murder in Rome.
· Explores concepts of omnipresence of evil and the dead hand of the past upon the present.
o Herman Melville
§ Fresh and charming tales of South Seas immediately popular.
§ Moby Dick (1851) masterpiece was not immediately popular.
· Complex allegory of good and evil through conflict b/w whaling captain Ahab and giant white whale Moby Dick.
o Ahab lives only for revenge
o Pursuit ends when Moby Dick sinks Ahab’s ship, leaving only one survivor.
o AR Whale’s exact ID and Ahab’s motives remain obscure.
· HV people of the time more accustomed to straightforward prose
Portrayers of the Past
- Distinguished group of American historians also emerging
o George Bancroft secretary of navy
§ Founded Naval Academy at Annapolis 1845
§ “Father of American History”
· Published a spirited, superpatriotic history of the United States
o William Prescott
§ Published classic accounts of conquest of Mexico (1843) and Peru (1847)
o Francis Parkman wrote of struggle b/w France and Britain in colonial times for mastery of North America.
- Early American historians almost without exception New Englanders.
o B/c Boston provided well-stocked library and stimulating literary tradition.
o Most writers were abolitionists, which stimulated opposition to slavery.
§ HV early American history recorded would suffer from antisouthern bias.
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