Transcendentalism and the Hudson River School

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Transcendentalism and the Hudson River School

• Interpretations of Nationalism and Sectionalism

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Objectives

• Trace the creation of a distinctive American
  cultural identity by writers and artists of the
  period.

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What is transcendentalism?

• Transcendentalism questions established cultural
  forms and focuses on being educated
  (enlightened). It urged people to fulfill their
  human potential and to be fully human. Also
  stressed self-reliance.
• It spread throughout religion, education,
  literature, philosophy, and social reform

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Transcendentalism

• Romanticism is directly correlated with
  Transcendentalism
• Also manifested in the creation of Utopian
  Societies like Brook Farm and Oneida
• Gave more support to the anti-slavery movement

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Authors

• Ralph Waldo Emerson- Nature
• Henry David Thoreau- Walden
• James Fenimore Cooper- Last of the Mohicans
• Legacy lived on in Louisa Mae Alcott, Emily
  Dickinson, and Walt Whitman

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What was the Hudson River School?

• The Hudson River School was a group of painters,
  led by Thomas Cole, who painted awesomely
  Romantic images of America's wilderness, in the
  Hudson River Valley and also in the newly opened
  West.

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Thomas Cole
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Albert Bierdstadt
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Martin Johnson Heade
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The Rise of Reform

• 2nd Great Awakening
• Rise of Mormonism
• Education
• Prisons and Asylums
• Womens Movement
• Temperance
• Utopian Communities

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Religion

• Movement from the Puritan ideals of the previous
  century to more evangelical.

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2nd Great Awakening

• Unitarianism spoke of the humanness of God
  rebuked all Puritan ideals
• Charles Grandison Finney- preacher
• Stressed that people were moral free agents, but
  to be saved they had to hurry to salvation
• Led to secular (non-religious) reform movements
• Women encouraged to be missionaries

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Rise of Mormonism

• Founded by Joseph Smith
• Led to Salt Lake City, Utah by Brigham Young
• Established Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
  Saints
• Experienced persecution because of their belief
  and practice of polygamy

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Education

• Horace Mann- introduced public school education
  to New England states
• Stressed that school should be compulsory
  (children made to go)
• States should pay (not the federal gov)
• Introduced McGuffey Readers

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Prisons and Asylums

• Led by Dorothea Dix

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Womens Movement

• Catherine Beecher
• one of the chief proponents of the "cult of
  domesticity," devoting much of her writing to
  domestic and household topics both ideological
  and practical.
• stressed that women should become teachers and
  have more autonomy and power

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Womens Movement

• Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
  Elizabeth Blackwell.
• Held the Seneca Falls Convention in NY, where
  they issued the Declaration of Sentiments, which
  modeled after the Declaration of Independence
• Stated how men had deprived women of the right to
  vote and equality

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Temperance

• The attempt to limit or ban the consumption of
  alcohol.

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Utopian Communities

• Utopia the perfect society
• Brook Farm
• Oneida Community
• Both failed once people, with all of their
  imperfections, started bickering

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To Come.

• The largest and most controversial reform
  movement of the 19th Century Abolition
• Women were very influential in all of the reform
  movements (education, prisons, abolition,
  religion)

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Due Wednesday, Nov. 16

• Essay
• American reform movements between 1820 and 1860
  reflected both optimistic and pessimistic views
  of human nature and society. Assess the
  validity of this statement in reference to reform
  movements in 3 of the following areas
• Education, Temperance, Womens Rights, Utopian
  experiments, and Penal institutions