4.9 APUSH

As the United States expanded and became more centralized, a distinct American culture began to emerge.
New generations of Americans had limited ties to Europe and were creating their own American identity.

An artistic, literary, and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century.
Sparked the Romantic Era from 1800-1850.
Emphasis on emotion, individualism, and nature.
American artists, writers, and thinkers borrowed heavily from this movement.

In the early 19th century, Americans were developing a sense of nationalism.
Strengthened by the "victory" in the War of 1812 and the ensuing Era of Good Feelings under President James Monroe.
Characterized by minimal partisanship and a newfound sense of national pride.

The effort to create a distinctively American literature made considerable progress in the 1820s through the work of James Fenimore Cooper.
Beginning with The Spy (1821), The Pioneers (1823), and The Last of the Mohicans (1826), he wrote a series of novels populated by Indians and settlers that presented a vivid, if romanticized, picture of frontier life before the Revolution.
He was the first American novelist to explore American themes, settings, and characters.
American nationalism shone through his work, as he evoked the ideal of the ruggedly independent American romantic hero with a natural inner goodness.

Washington Irving: “Rip Van Winkle”, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
Edgar Allan Poe (dark romanticism): The Fall of the House of Usher, “The Raven,” “The Tell Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat”
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
Herman Melville: Moby Dick

Walt Whitman was an author and poet living in Brooklyn, New York.
One of his most acclaimed works, Leaves of Grass (1855), celebrated the liberation of the individual spirit.
Historians today believe his emphasis on liberation resulted from the fact that he was gay and unable to freely express his identity in the 19th century.

Margaret Fuller published Woman in the 19th Century, in which she argued for the important relationship between the discovery of the “self” and the prevailing gender roles of the century.
She wrote, “Many women are considering within themselves what they need and what they have not.”

American painters sought to capture the power of American nature by portraying some of the nation’s most spectacular and undeveloped areas.
Romantic concept of the sublime: nature that inspires awe, wonder, and even terror.

The first great school of American painters emerged in New York.
Painters like Thomas Cole and Frederic Church painted the sweeping vistas of the Hudson River Valley.
In painting these scenes, they were stating that unlike in Europe, “wild nature” still existed in America, making America a nation of greater promise.
As Americans pushed westward in later centuries, works by Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran attracted widespread attention.

Public architecture in the early 19th century was constructed in the Greek revival style, as the newly independent nation was determined to be the new model of democracy.
Capitol buildings in North Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio were all built in this style.
Plantation homes in the south were also built in this style.

The Gothic Revival style became popular in the 1840s, with a return to medieval décor with chimneys, gables, gargoyles, and stained glass.

The Romantic way of thinking found significant American expression in the transcendentalist movement.
This movement emphasized the indefinable and the unknowable.
Transcendentalists were complete individualists, believing that people could stretch beyond their known capabilities.
Important Transcendentalists included Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote “Nature” (1836) and Henry David Thoreau, who wrote Walden and whose 1849 essay “Resistance to Civil Government,” advocated “civil disobedience” or “passive resistance” to unjust laws.

[1] A new national culture emerged that combined American elements, European influences, and regional cultural sensibilities.
[2] Liberal social ideas from abroad and Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility influenced literature, art, philosophy, and architecture.