Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Studies in Cultural History)

353 Pages·1997·0.99 MB·English

by  Daniel W. Howe

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STUDIES IN CULTURAL HISTORY
Making the American Self

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D W H
ANIEL ALKER OWE
Making the American Self
Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
1997
Copyright©1997bythePresidentandFellowsofHarvardCollege
Allrightsreserved
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Howe,DanielWalker.
MakingtheAmericanself:JonathanEdwardstoAbrahamLincoln/
DanielWalkerHowe.
p. cm.—(Studesinculturalhistory)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN:0–674–16555–1(alk.paper)
1. Nationalcharacteristics,American. 2. Identity(Psychology)—
UnitedStates. 3. UnitedStates—Intellectuallife—1783–1865.
I. Title. II. Series.
E169.1.H76 1997
96–34982
For Sandra

Contents
Introduction 1
I Virtue and Passion in the American Enlightenment
1 Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Problem of
Human Nature 21
2 The American Founders and the Scottish Enlightenment 48
3 The Political Psychology of The Federalist 78
II Constructing Character in Antebellum America
4 The Emerging Ideal of Self-Improvement 107
5 Self-Made Men: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass 136
6 Shaping the Selves of Others 157
III The Cultivation of the Self Among the New England
Romantics
7 The Platonic Quest in New England 189
8 Margaret Fuller’s Heroic Ideal of Womanhood 212
9 The Constructed Self Against the State 235
Conclusion 256
Notes 271
Acknowledgments 332
Index 335

Self-culture is possible, not only because we can
enter into and search ourselves. We have a still
nobler power, that of acting on, determining, and
forming ourselves. This is a fearful as well as
glorious endowment.
—William Ellery Channing, Self-Culture, 1838