America in the 19th Century

American Literature

• Relationship to European literature– Romantic background (nationalism, love

of nature, emotion of author, liberalism, exoticism)

– Search for truly American work

Washington Irving

• Legend of Sleepy Hollow

• Rip Van Winkle• Tales of the

Alhambra

James Fenimore Cooper

• Last of the Mohicans

• The Deerslayer

Nathaniel Hawthorne

• The Scarlet Letter• The House of Seven

Gables

Herman Melville

• Moby Dick

Henry W. Longfellow

• The Song of Hiawatha• Courtship of Miles Standish

Edgar Allan Poe

• Invented mystery• Dark poetry with

morals• The Raven

– Wife died in Baltimore

• The Purloined Letter• The Tell Tale Heart• Cask of Amontillado• Pit and the Pendulum

Walt Whitman

• Leaves of Grass– Collection of American poems

“Here is the test of wisdom, Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,

Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,

Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,

Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,

Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;

Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.”

– Walt Whitman

Transcendentalism

• Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

• Knowledge beyond the 5 sense– Intuitive truths

• Nature is a source of joy• The soul is a reflection of

out lives• Began a movement

among Unitarians

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Nature – Defined American

Transcendentalism

• Self Reliance– Outlined principles

to base decision

Henry David Thoreau

• Walden– Wanted to lived

Emerson’s teachings

• On Civil Disobedience– basic laws transcend

laws of the land

• American dichotomy

“ Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking

for it.”– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Louisa May Alcott

• Little Women

Emily Dickinson

• American poetess• Seclusion in

Massachusetts• 1700 poems, only 7

published during lifetime– Theme: interaction

between self and world

Westward Settlement

• Before 1820– Driving force was economic

improvement– Acquisition of Louisiana– War 1812– Transportation

Westward Settlement

• After 1820– Slavery– Promotion of common

man– Pioneers– Immigration form

Europe– Manifest Destiny– Homestead Act

American Civil War

• Causes• Conduct of the

war• Results

– Northern domination

– Republican party and Lincoln

“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one.”

– Abraham Lincoln (1809-1935)

"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six

sharpening my ax."

– Lincoln, Abraham, quoted in Thorpe, Scott, How to Think Like Einstein, Barnes & Noble Books, Inc., 2000, p.130.

Inventors

• Benjamin Franklin– Bifocals– Odometer– Stove– Electricity defined

Inventors (Not all agreed)

“You are welcome to use the school room to debate all proper questions in, but such things as railroads and telegraphs are impossibilities and rank infidelity. There is nothing in the Word of God about them. If God had designated that His intelligent creatures should travel at the frightful speed of 15 miles and hour, He would have foretold it through His holy prophets. It is a device of Satan to lead immortal souls down to Hell.”

— President Martin Van Buren, 1830 in Ohio

“Those tremendously useful men, those powerful and invincible men, Marconi, Edison, Orville Wright, Burbank, who sit wrapped in purple robes of creative genius, are simply men who are capable of striking reiterated blows. They are men who reached success because they subjected themselves to the fierce fires of intellectual and physical endeavor. Men never ascend to eminence by a single leap or by growth overnight. Longfellow gave us this:

‘The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.’”

— Spencer W. Kimball

Inventors

• Eli Whitney—Cotton Gin• Robert Fulton—Steam Boat• Cyrus McCormick—Reaper • Samuel F. B. Morse—Telegraph• Charles Goodyear—Rubber vulcanization

• Elias Howe—Sewing machine• Edwin Drake—Oil wells• Alexander Graham Bell—Telephone

Inventors

• Thomas Edison

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

– Thomas Alva Edison

"Hell, there are not rules here–we're trying to accomplish

something."

– Edison, Thomas A., quoted in Thorpe, Scott, How to Think Like Einstein, Barnes & Noble Books, Inc., 2000,

p. 124.

Industrialization

• Fisk and Gould—Stock market speculation• Rockefeller—Standard Oil• Pulitzer & Hearst—Newspaper• Harriman—NY Central Railroad• Carnegie—Steel• Henry Ford—Automobile, production line• E.I. DuPont—Gunpowder, plastic, chemical• Sloan—General Motors

The Uniqueness (Creativity) of America

• Founded on a principle rather than as a ethnic homeland

• What is the principle?

"Is life so sweet, or peace so dear, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

– Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775, Virginia

"They that give up liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety."

– Benjamin Franklin

"God help us, as free men, to recognize the source of our blessings, the threat to our freedom and our moral and spiritual standards, and the need for humble, yet courageous, action to preserve these priceless, time-tested blessings, I humbly pray..."

– Ezra Taft Benson, "Watchman, Warn the Wicked", Ensign, July 1973, p. 38

Thank You

"What actually happened was that the American West developed highly characteristic technologies for daily life. We all know the texture today: log cabins, windmills, card games, heavy horse-drawn wagons, whiskey, large saddles, and...death by hanging. Historian Lynn White pointed out a startling feature of all these technologies and their link to the Middle Ages [and not to the earlier Roman or later Industrial Revolution technologies]....The technologies of the 11th through the 15th centuries were wonderfully direct, practical and inventive, and so too were the immigrants to the American West. Medieval life and western life were open to variety and change. What the Old West really did was to mirror medieval life accurately, because it was populated by free and inventive people who knew how to adapt to new circumstances."

– John Lienhard, The Engines of Our Ingenuity, p.14.