America in the 19th Century

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America in the 19th Century
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American Literature

• Relationship to European literature
• Romantic background (nationalism, love of nature,
  emotion of author, liberalism, exoticism)
• Search for truly American work

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Washington Irving

• Legend of Sleepy Hollow
• Rip Van Winkle
• Tales of the Alhambra

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James Fenimore Cooper

• Last of the Mohicans
• The Deerslayer

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Nathaniel Hawthorne

• The Scarlet Letter
• The House of Seven Gables

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Herman Melville

• Moby Dick

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Henry W. Longfellow

• The Song of Hiawatha
• Courtship of Miles Standish

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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

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Walt Whitman

• Leaves of Grass
• Collection of American poems

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• Here is the test of wisdom,
• Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
• Wisdom cannot be passd 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

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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

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Nature
• Defined American Transcendentalism
• Self Reliance
• Outlined principles to base decision

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Henry David Thoreau

• Walden
• Wanted to lived Emersons teachings
• On Civil Disobedience
• basic laws transcend laws of the land
• American dichotomy

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• Success usually comes to those who are too
  busy to be looking for it.
• Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

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Louisa May Alcott

• Little Women

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Emily Dickinson

• American poetess
• Seclusion in Massachusetts
• 1700 poems, only 7 published during lifetime
• Theme interaction between self and world

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Westward Settlement

• Before 1820
• Driving force was economic improvement
• Acquisition of Louisiana
• War 1812
• Transportation

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Westward Settlement

• After 1820
• Slavery
• Promotion of common man
• Pioneers
• Immigration form Europe
• Manifest Destiny
• Homestead Act

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American Civil War

• Causes
• Conduct of the war
• Results
• Northern domination
• Republican party and Lincoln

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• If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this
  one.
• Abraham Lincoln (1809-1935)

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• "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.

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Inventors

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

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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

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• 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
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Inventors

• Eli WhitneyCotton Gin
• Robert FultonSteam Boat
• Cyrus McCormickReaper
• Samuel F. B. MorseTelegraph
• Charles GoodyearRubber vulcanization
• Elias HoweSewing machine
• Edwin DrakeOil wells
• Alexander Graham BellTelephone

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Inventors

• Thomas Edison

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• I have not failed. Ive just found 10,000 ways
  that wont work.
• Thomas Alva Edison

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• "Hell, there are not rules herewe're trying to
  accomplish something."
• Edison, Thomas A., quoted in Thorpe, Scott, How
  to Think Like Einstein, Barnes Noble Books,
  Inc., 2000, p. 124.

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Industrialization

• Fisk and GouldStock market speculation
• RockefellerStandard Oil
• Pulitzer HearstNewspaper
• HarrimanNY Central Railroad
• CarnegieSteel
• Henry FordAutomobile, production line
• E.I. DuPontGunpowder, plastic, chemical
• SloanGeneral Motors

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The Uniqueness (Creativity) of America

• Founded on a principle rather than as a ethnic
  homeland
• What is the principle?

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• "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

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

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• "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

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Thank You
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• "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.