1. Antebellum Culture and Reform
In Antebellum America, Americans
were optimistic amidst the changes
that were occurring—eco,
pol,soc,geo.
Movements arose to reform, to seek
order and gain inner peace.

2. The Romantic Impulse
• Religious thought (middle ages)-faith the most
important thing
• Enlightenment(1600-1700)—the age of reason-challenge ideas grounded in tradition and faith,
and advance knowledge through the scientific
method. It promoted scientific thought.
Associated with nonfiction writing, such as essays
and philosophical treatises. Major Enlightenment
writers include Thomas Hobbes, John Locke,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, René Descartes.

3. • Romanticism- (1830-1900) gives greater
importance to content than form, emphasizes
imagination, emotion and introspection—
often celebrates nature, the common man
and the freedom of the spirit—reaction
against reason.

4. Hudson River School-informal group of
like-minded painters-known for
romantic paintings of the West
• Nationalism and Romanticism in American
Painting—encouraged painting of landscapes
because nature more than civilization was the
best source of wisdom and spiritual fulfillment

5. Albert Bierstadt
Domes of the Yosemite

6. Lake Tahoe

7. Lake in the Rockies

8. Falls of Niagara from Below

9. Thomas Moran
• Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

10. An Arizona Sunset Near The Grand
Canyon

11. View of the Rocky Mountains

12. Literature
• James Fenimore Cooper—celebrated the
American Spirit and the American Frontier-Last of
the Mohicans and The Deerslayer
• Herman Melville-Moby Dick-unleashing of human
emotion-All that most maddens and torments;
all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with
malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes
the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and
thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly
personified, and made practically assailable in
Moby-Dick.

13. Walt Whitman-Leave of Grass
Oh Captain, My Captain
http://youtu.be/lBL8wT6Pm9g

14. Edgar Allan Poe-master of the macabre
• http://youtu.be/rf7aBCrfOQE Annabel Lee
• http://youtu.be/06f3Vxl1Sus The Raven

15. • Transcendentalism (c. 1835–1860): An
American philosophical and spiritual
movement-emphasizing the intuitive and
spiritual above that of experience or
observation—truths go beyond reason

16. • Henry David Thoreau—Walden and
trumpeted the idea of “civil disobedience”—
an early advocate of nonviolent protest
• Ralph Waldo Emerson— “Self-Reliance”—his
essays and poems argued for self-reliance,
independent thinking and the primacy of
spiritual matters over material ones

17. Utopia and Communal Livingnumerous during this time
• Brook Farm(trans. ideal—goal—to achieve a more natural
union between intellectual and manual labor--outside of
Boston—failure, but is remembered for its atmosphere of
artistic creativity and an innovated school
• Robert Owen-New Harmony-based on total equality-an
answer to the problems of inequity and alienation caused by
the Industrial Revolution--failure
• Oneida Community-rejected traditional family and marriage—
“Free-love” –economically successful by producing silverware
of excellent quality
• The Shakers-religious sect founded by Ann Lee—kept women
and men separate forbidding marriage and sexual relations-died out
• Mormons-most successful

18. Reformers-Sojourner Truth
• http://youtu.be/XilHJc9IZvE
• This Antebellum reform movement was
mainly a regional phenomenon—succeeded in
the North and West but had very little impact
in the South—increasingly they viewed it as a
northern conspiracy against their way of life

20. Manifest Destiny