American Romanticism 1800

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American Romanticism18001860
Feature Menu
Interactive Time Line Milestone Rise of
American Romanticism Milestone The Louisiana
Purchase Milestone Education and Reform
Milestone Transcendental Influence Milestone
The Gold Rush Milestone The Slavery
Issue What Have You Learned?
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American Romanticism18001860
Choose a link on the time line to go to a
milestone.
1800 Rise of American Romanticism
1830s1850s Transcendental Influence
18501859 The Slavery Issue
1860
1820
1800
1840
1826 Lyceum Movement
1803 The Louisiana Purchase
1849 The Gold Rush
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Rise of American Romanticism
Reaction Against Rationalism

• Cities filled with poor living conditions and
  disease

• Value placed on nature and exotic settings

• Characteristic Romantic journey to the
  countryside, away from city

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Rise of American Romanticism
Romantic Escapism

• Valued feelings and intuition over reason

• Found beauty in exotic locales and supernatural

• Poetry highest expression of imagination

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Rise of American Romanticism
Fireside Poets
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
John Greenleaf Whittier

• Wrote about American settings and subject matter
  using traditional styles and forms

• Very popularfamilies read their poems at family
  firesides for entertainment

Oliver Wendell Holmes
James Russell Lowell
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Rise of American Romanticism
Romantic Heroes

• Frontier life idealized in novels

• Typical Romantic hero youthful, innocent
  intuitive, close to nature

• James Fenimore Coopers Natty Bumppo is the first
  American heroic figure

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The Louisiana Purchase
Westward Expansion
The United States

• gained all land between Mississippi River and
  Rocky Mountains

• paid about four cents an acre for the land

• immediately doubled in size

Louisiana Purchase
Oh Susanna! Polka
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The Louisiana Purchase
Westward Expansion

• Louisiana purchase launched 100 years of westward
  expansion.

• President Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to
  explore western territory.

• More people moved into frontier areas.

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Education and Reform
The Lyceum Movement

• Original Lyceum founded in Greece in 335 B.C.

• American movement founded in Massachusetts

• Sought to teach adults, train teachers, and
  institute social reforms

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Education and Reform
The Lyceum Movement

• People went to lyceums for lectures.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the most popular
  speakers.

• Lyceums led to new ways of thinking and the
  establishment of museums and libraries.

Emerson lecturing in Concord, Massachusetts
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Education and Reform
Other Reform Movements

• Dorothea Dix worked to help mentally ill people.

• Horace Mann worked to improve public education.

Dorothea Dix
Horace Mann

• Abolitionists worked to end slavery.

• Feminists campaigned for womens rights

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Transcendental Influence
True Reality Is Spiritual

• Everything, including humans, is a reflection of
  Divine Soul.

• Physical facts of natural world are a doorway to
  spiritual world.

• Intuition allows people to behold Gods spirit
  revealed in nature or in their own souls.

• Spontaneous feelings are superior to
  intellectualism and rationality.

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Transcendental Influence
Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Combined beliefs from Europe and Asia with
  Puritan, revival, and Romantic traditions

• Published important essays such as
  Self-Reliance and The Over-Soul

• Had an extremely optimistic view of the world and
  nature

• Optimism appealed to people living in period of
  economic downturn, strife, and conflict

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Transcendental Influence
Dark Romantics

• Shared many beliefs with the Transcendentalists

• Explored conflict between good and evil and the
  effects of guilt and sin

Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
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The Gold Rush
The Rush West

• Gold was discovered in Sutters Mill, California.

• Tens of thousands traveled west, hoping for
  wealth.

• New towns and cities were founded along routes to
  California and near mining sites.

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The Gold Rush
New Frontiers

• Journey to California long and dangerous

• Led to new settlements along the land route and
  west coast

• Led to building of the transcontinental railroad

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The Slavery Issue
A Nation Divided

• Missouri Compromise barred slavery west of
  Missouri.

• Compromise was overturned by Kansas-Nebraska Act,
  which

• opened territories to slavery

• led to violence in Kansas and to the founding of
  the antislavery Republican Party

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The Slavery Issue
A Nation Divided

• Dred Scott decision denied Congress right to
  prohibit slavery in territories.

Dred Scott

• John Browns raid at Harpers Ferry led to more
  violence.

Burning of Harpers Ferry
John Brown
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What Have You Learned?
Indicate whether the following statements refer
to the time before, during, or after the Gold
Rush.
______ Novelists popularize the American
Romantic hero. ______ Western New York
represents frontier of the country. ______ The
first transcontinental railroad is built. ______
Education reform begins in Massachusetts.
during
before
after
before
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The End
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Viewing the Art
Indian Pass Thomas Cole (18011848) was a leader
in the school of American landscape painting that
looked to untamed nature as its subject.
Activity What attitudes toward nature are
suggested by this painting?
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In this painting of the Adirondack Mountains,
Cole erases all signs of white settlement and
depicts an American Indian as the lone
inhabitant.