A DEMOCRATIC CULTURE

1
A DEMOCRATIC CULTURE

• In Search of Native Grounds
• by the middle of 19th century, American culture
  was clearly an offspring rather than an imitation
  of European culture
• of American novelists before 1830, only James
  Fenimore Cooper made successful use of the
  national heritage

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• most American novelists imitated British writers,
  though none approached the level of their British
  counterparts
• New York emerged as America's literary capital
  and Washington Irving as its leading light
• American painting reached a level comparable to
  that of Europe, where many of the best American
  painters still trained
• American painters such as West, Copley, Peale,
  and Stuart excelled as portraitists
• American painting was less obviously imitative of
  European styles than was American literature

3

• The Romantic View of Life
• romantic movement was a reaction against Age of
  Reason
• romantics valued emotion and intuition over pure
  reason, and they stressed individualism,
  optimism, patriotism, and ingeniousness
• romanticism fit mood of 19th-century America
• transcendentalism, a mystical, intuitive way of
  looking at life that aspired to go beyond the
  world of the senses, represented the fullest
  expression of romanticism

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• transcendentalists regarded nature as the essence
  of divinity thus, humans were divine because
  they were part of nature
• above all, transcendentalists valued the
  individual and the aspiration to stretch beyond
  human capacities

5

• Emerson and Thoreau
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, the leading
  transcendentalist thinker, urged Americans to put
  aside their devotion to things European and seek
  inspiration in immediate surroundings
• although he favored change and believed in
  progress, the new industrial society of New
  England disturbed him profoundly
• however, he was not temperamentally disposed to
  join crusades for reform

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• he was too idealistic to accept compromises most
  reformers must make to achieve their ends
• Emerson valued self-reliance and disliked
  powerful governments
• like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau objected to
  societys restrictions on the individual
• Thoreau spent two years living alone in a cabin
  at Walden Pond to prove that an individual need
  not depend on society

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• to protest Mexican War, which he believed immoral
  because it advanced the cause of slavery, Thoreau
  refused to pay state poll tax
• for this action, he was arrested and spent a
  night in jail
• his essay, Civil Disobedience, explained his
  view on the proper relation of the individual to
  the state

8

• Edgar Allan Poe
• Poe epitomized the romantic image of the tortured
  genius
• haunted by alcohol, melancholia, hallucinations,
  and debt, he was nevertheless a master short
  story writer and poet, a penetrating critic, and
  an excellent magazine editor

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• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Hawthorne rejected the egoism and optimism of
  transcendentalism
• he was fascinated by New Englands Puritan past
  and its continuing influence
• his best known works, including The Scarlet
  Letter and The House of the Seven Gables,
  concerned individuals and their struggle with
  sin, guilt, and the pride and isolation that
  often afflict those who place too much reliance
  on their own judgment

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• Herman Melville
• like Hawthorne, Melville could not accept the
  transcendentalists optimism
• he considered their vague talk about striving and
  their faith in the goodness of humanity
  complacent nonsense
• in his most famous work, Moby Dick, Melville
  dealt powerfully with the problems of good and
  evil, courage and cowardice, faith, stubbornness,
  and pride

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• Walt Whitman
• the most romantic and distinctively American
  writer of his age, Whitman believed that a poet
  could best express himself by relying
  uncritically on his natural inclinations
• his greatest work, Leaves of Grass, often shocked
  or confused his readers with its commonplace
  subject matter and its coarse language

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• The Wider Literary Renaissance
• pre-Civil War literary renaissance also included
  New Englanders Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John
  Greenleaf Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and
  James Russell Lowell
• Southern literature was even more markedly
  romantic than that of New England, as
  demonstrated by novelists John Pendleton Kennedy
  and William Gilmore Simms
• several historians achieved prominence during
  this period, including George Bancroft and
  Francis Parkman

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• Domestic Tastes
• Charles Bulfinchs Federal style of
  architecture flourished in the North
• wood-turning machinery contributed to the
  popularity of the Gothic style
• Greek and Italian styles also flourished, the
  former particularly in the South
• new technology allowed the mass production of
  textiles with complicated designs, including
  wallpaper, rugs, and hangings

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• combined with the use of machine methods in the
  production of furniture, new textiles had a
  profound impact on furniture in American homes
• more affluent Americans decorated their homes
  with the works of American genre painters,
  luminists, and members of the Hudson River
  School
• beginning in the 1850s, the lithographs of
  Currier and Ives brought a fairly crude but
  charming form of art to a still wider audience

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• Education for Democracy
• common school movement, led by Henry Barnard and
  Horace Mann, urged creation of state-administered
  schools taught by professional teachers
• movement was based on an unquenchable faith in
  the improvability of the human race through
  education and a belief that democracy required an
  educated citizenry
• by the 1850s, every state outside the South
  provided free elementary schools and supported
  institutions to train teachers

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• historians have identified several reasons for
  the success of the common school movement
• common schools helped to Americanize immigrant
  children, and they brought Americans of different
  economic circumstances and ethnic backgrounds
  into early and mutually beneficial contact with
  one another
• they also instilled good employee values

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• Reading and the Dissemination of Culture
• as the population grew and became more
  concentrated, and as middle class values
  permeated American society, particularly in the
  North, popular concern for culture increased
• industrialization made it possible to satisfy
  this new demand
• improved printing techniques reduced the cost of
  books, magazines, and newspapers
• moralistic and sentimental domestic novels
  reached their peak of popularity in the 1850s

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• Americans devoured reams of religious literature
• self-improvement books were popular as well
• philanthropists established libraries and public
  lectures
• mutual improvement societies known as lyceums
  founded libraries, sponsored lectures, and
  lobbied for better education

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• The State of the Colleges
• the cost of private colleges meant that
  relatively few students could afford them since
  students were hard to come by, discipline and
  academic standards were lax
• the college curriculum focused on the classics
  rather than on practical or scientific studies
  until the 1840s
• Harvard and Yale established schools of science
  Harvard allowed students to choose some of their
  courses, and instituted grades

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• colleges in the South and West began to offer
  mechanical and agricultural subjects
• Oberlin College admitted women in 1837, and the
  Georgia Female College opened in 1839
• white males constituted the overwhelming majority
  of students, but only 2 percent of white males
  went to college

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• Civic Cultures
• cities and towns sought to become local and
  regional centers of learning, art, and culture
• in the East, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia
  vied for primacy
• in the West, Cincinnati, Lexington, and
  Pittsburgh sought to become regional centers of
  culture
• members of the professions were generally
  accepted as the arbiters of taste in cultural
  matters

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• Scientific Stirrings
• few Americans pursued science on more than a
  part-time basis, and few American scientists
  achieved international recognition in the half
  century after the Revolution
• Tocqueville attributed this to Americans
  distrust of theory and abstract knowledge
• nevertheless, Americans accounted for some
  advances national and state governments
  sponsored geological and coastal surveys and the
  Smithsonian Institution was founded

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• American Humor
• the juxtaposition of high ideals and low reality
  formed the basis for much American humor
• James Russell Lowells Bigelow Papers turned
  Down East humor to more telling satirical
  effect
• Seba Smiths character, Major Jack Downing, and
  Johnson J. Hoopers creation, Simon Suggs,
  provided satirical lenses through which to
  examine Jacksonian America