Transcendentalism and the Hudson River School

1. Transcendentalism and the Hudson River School Interpretations of Nationalism and Sectionalism

2. Objectives • Trace the creation of a distinctive American cultural identity by writers and artists of the period.

3. What is transcendentalism? • Transcendentalism questions established cultural forms and focuses on being educated (enlightened). It urged people to fulfill their human potential and to be fully human. Also stressed self-reliance. • It spread throughout religion, education, literature, philosophy, and social reform

4. Transcendentalism • Romanticism is directly correlated with Transcendentalism • Also manifested in the creation of Utopian Societies like Brook Farm and Oneida • Gave more support to the anti-slavery movement

5. Authors • Ralph Waldo Emerson- Nature • Henry David Thoreau- Walden • James Fenimore Cooper- Last of the Mohicans • Legacy lived on in Louisa Mae Alcott, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman

6. What was the Hudson River School? • The Hudson River School was a group of painters, led by Thomas Cole, who painted awesomely Romantic images of America's wilderness, in the Hudson River Valley and also in the newly opened West.

7. Thomas Cole

8. Albert Bierdstadt

9. Martin Johnson Heade

10. The Rise of Reform • 2nd Great Awakening • Rise of Mormonism • Education • Prisons and Asylums • Women’s Movement • Temperance • Utopian Communities

11. Religion • Movement from the Puritan ideals of the previous century to more evangelical.

12. 2nd Great Awakening • Unitarianism: spoke of the “humanness” of God– rebuked all Puritan ideals • Charles Grandison Finney- preacher • Stressed that people were moral free agents, but to be saved they had to hurry to salvation • Led to secular (non-religious) reform movements • Women encouraged to be missionaries

13. Rise of Mormonism • Founded by Joseph Smith • Led to Salt Lake City, Utah by Brigham Young • Established Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints • Experienced persecution because of their belief and practice of polygamy

14. Education • Horace Mann- introduced public school education to New England states • Stressed that school should be compulsory (children made to go) • States should pay (not the federal gov) • Introduced McGuffey Readers

16. Prisons and Asylums • Led by Dorothea Dix

17. Women’s Movement • Catherine Beecher: • one of the chief proponents of the "cult of domesticity," devoting much of her writing to domestic and household topics both ideological and practical. • stressed that women should become teachers and have more autonomy and power

18. Women’s Movement • Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Blackwell. • Held the Seneca Falls Convention in NY, where they issued the Declaration of Sentiments, which modeled after the Declaration of Independence • Stated how men had deprived women of the right to vote and equality

19. Temperance • The attempt to limit or ban the consumption of alcohol.

21. Utopian Communities • Utopia: the perfect society • Brook Farm • Oneida Community • Both failed once people, with all of their imperfections, started bickering

22. To Come…. • The largest and most controversial reform movement of the 19th Century: Abolition • Women were very influential in all of the reform movements (education, prisons, abolition, religion)

23. Due Wednesday, Nov. 16 • Essay: • “American reform movements between 1820 and 1860 reflected both optimistic and pessimistic views of human nature and society.” Assess the validity of this statement in reference to reform movements in 3 of the following areas: • Education, Temperance, Women’s Rights, Utopian experiments, and Penal institutions