Development of an American culture

American literature

During the first half of the 19th century, American literature blossomed as new writers, including Edgar Allen Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, explored themes related to American exploration, religion and morality, and the expansion of the early American republic and the concomitant demise of indigenous societies east of the Mississippi River. Poe’s works frequently developed suspenseful themes and established greater preeminence for the emerging detective story genre. James Fenimore Cooper’s most famous works, including Last of the Mohicans and the character Natty Bumppo, highlighted and romanticized critical developments involving the displacement of indigenous peoples, coinciding with Jackson era policies of Indian removal. Nathaniel Hawthorne explored themes related to American colonial history and Puritan morality in The Scarlet Letter, a novel set in 17th century Massachusetts that highlighted gender double standards and the restrictive nature of Puritan society.

American art

As with American literary developments in the antebellum period, American artistic developments and trends increasingly diverged from their earlier European roots. American artists increasingly focused on unique features of the American landscapes and culture with the Hudson River School of artists, including Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and later Albert Bierstadt, achieving considerable prominence. In many of these paintings that coincided with early American industrialization, the Hudson River School artists portrayed natural landscapes without human presence or impacts; in some instances, painters may have originally included representations of Native Americans and then seemingly removed them from the paintings, further highlighting the disappearance of indigenous societies throughout the eastern United States.

Philosophy

The most prominent American antebellum philosophers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, frequently invoked themes about justice and reconnecting with nature. While concerns about the potential expansion of slavery into new territories was not prominently featured in many of the literary works referenced above, American philosophers, often referred to as Transcendentalists, criticized the American government for suppressing liberties and for waging war at least in part to introduce slavery into new territories, particularly when confronting the Mexican-American War and the addition of new western territories.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil.

Cult of domesticity

When asked to name critical developments for gender relations in antebellum America, most modern Americans are likely to mention the foundational Seneca Falls Convention which will be discussed in lesson 5.12. It is essential, though, to also note that the changes sought by women, and some men, at Seneca Falls and elsewhere were expressed in a culture that frequently invoked the cult of domesticity. Building upon earlier concepts of republican motherhood, but more specifically related to industrialization and the growth of the new middle class, the cult of domesticity emphasized the preeminent economic roles of men in the workplace while exhorting women to take pride in maintaining the household and raising children.

Catherine Beecher, Treatise on Domestic Economy, 1842

They [American women] are made subordinate in station, only where a regard to their best interests demands it, while, as if in compensation for this, by custom and courtesy, they are always treated as superiors. Universally, in this Country, through every class of society, precedence is given to woman, in all the comforts, conveniences, and courtesies, of life.

In civil and political affairs, American women take no interest or concern, except so far as they sympathize with their family and personal friends; but in all cases, in which they do feel a concern, their opinions and feelings have a consideration, equal, or even superior, to that of the other sex.

In matters pertaining to the education of their children, in the selection and support of a, clergyman, in all benevolent enterprises, and in all questions relating to morals or manners, they have a superior influence.”

The development of a distinctive American culture, increasingly separated from European roots, continued throughout the first half of the 19th century.

While there were Romantic artistic and literary movements in both Europe and the United States, American artists and writers incorporated distinctively American concerns and developments into their art and writing, including westward expansion, and the possibility of slavery being expanded into these new western territories, the displacement of indigenous societies, and recognition of, and reckoning with, religiosity.