Table Of ContentThe Early Republic and
Rise of National Identity
1783–1861
Editorial Advisers
Steven A. Goldberg
Past President, National Council for the Social Studies
Social Studies Department Chair
New Rochelle High School, New Rochelle, New York
Louise A. Hazebrouck
English teacher
Horace Greeley High School, Chappaqua, New York
Deborah Boxer Minchin
Social Studies teacher
New Rochelle High School, New Rochelle, New York
H T L
I S T O R Y H R O U G H I T E R A T U R E
A V , A T
MERICAN OICES MERICAN HEMES
The Early Republic and
Rise of National Identity
1783–1861
Jeffrey H. Hacker,
Editor
First published 2014 by M.E. Sharpe
Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The early republic and rise of national identity, 1783-1861 / Jeffrey H. Hacker, Editor.
pages cm.—(History through literature : American voices, American themes) (Sharpe
insights)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7656-8340-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7656-8322-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7656-8323-6 (electronic)
1. Literature and history—United States—History—19th century. 2. National characteristics,
American, in literature. 3. American literature—19th century. I. Hacker, Jeffrey H., editor of
compilation.
PS169.H5E27 2014
810.9’358—dc23 2013010945
No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and
are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN 13: 9780765683403 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 9780765683229 (pbk)
Contents
Preface vii
Chronology xi
Literature of the Early Republic 1
Sidelight: Writing Early American History 7
Bryant, William Cullen 11
“Thanatopsis,” 1817 13
Cooper, James Fenimore 17
Chapter One, The Last of the Mohicans, 1826 22
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 33
“The American Scholar” (excerpts), 1851 38
Environment and Nature, Views of 46
Equiano, Olaudah 53
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
(excerpt), 1789 56
Fuller, Margaret 63
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (excerpt), 1845 66
Hawthorne, Nathaniel 70
Chapter Two, “The Market-Place,” The Scarlet Letter, 1850 74
Holmes, Oliver Wendell 85
“The Chambered Nautilus,” 1857 87
v
vi Contents
Irving, Washington 89
“Rip Van Winkle” (excerpt), 1819 94
Libraries and Lyceums 103
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 109
The Song of Hiawatha (excerpt), 1855 113
Lowell, James Russell 116
The Biglow Papers, “No. 1” (excerpt), 1848 118
Melville, Herman 120
Chapter 42, “The Whiteness of the Whale,” Moby-Dick
(excerpt), 1851 124
Poe, Edgar Allan 135
“The Tell-Tale Heart,” 1843 139
Poetry 145
“Wade in the Water,” Slave Spiritual, 1830s 151
Theater 152
Thoreau, Henry David 159
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” Walden
(excerpt), 1854 164
Transcendentalism 173
Sidelight: Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Satire 177
Webster, Noah 181
An American Dictionary of the English Language
(excerpts), 1828 184
Whittier, John Greenleaf 186
“Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl” (excerpt), 1866 188
Bibliography and Web Sites 193
Index 197
Preface
History Through Literature: The Early Republic and Rise of National
Identity (1783–1861) is the second in a six-volume series designed to
support interdisciplinary coursework and independent reading in
American history and letters. The material presented in each volume
is selected and organized to enrich the study of the nation’s historical
record, its literary heritage, and their mutual influences.
Each volume begins with a chronology that identifies, defines,
and places in context the notable historical events, literary works,
authors’ lives, and cultural movements of the period in question.
The centerpiece of the volume is a comprehensive overview essay
that highlights the era’s major historical trends, social and cultural
movements, literary voices, and landmark works as reflections of
each other and the spirit of the times. The core content comprises
some 20–30 shorter articles—all drawn from the archives of the
Sharpe Reference and Sharpe Online Reference imprints—on
lives and works in period literature, including extended excerpts.
Special features called Sidelights apply a different lens to this ex-
ploration, focusing on historical literature as a reflection of both
the time of the actual events and the time of the writing. In the
present volume, for example, Sidelights consider early American
history writing and satires inspired by Transcendentalist utopian
communities.
Throughout the series, the designation of historical and literary
“periods” is not bound by strict start–end dates or specific events
(with such key exceptions as national independence, the Civil War,
the Great Depression, and World War II). The lives and works of writ-
ers obviously overlap any arbitrarily defined eras, and their styles
and themes often evolve in ways that defy neat historical classifica-
tion. Thus, the designation of historical periods and the selection of
vii
viii Preface
subjects in each volume are guided by subjective judgments based on
a confluence of factors—historical events, social and economic trends,
and the rise and decline of artistic and cultural movements.
This volume—simply enough, it would seem—begins with the
formal conclusion of the Revolutionary War (Treaty of Paris, Septem-
ber 1783) and ends with the first cannon fire of the Civil War (Fort
Sumter, April 1861). Clearly, however, major historical and literary
themes of this period are not easily separated from those of the war
years themselves or the Reconstruction era that followed. The defin-
ing events and issues of antebellum America—slavery, abolitionism,
and the failure to reach an enduring regional compromise—are surely
of a piece with those of 1861 and beyond; they are most usefully
studied together.
Thus, taking a thematic rather than strictly chronological approach,
this volume focuses less on the literature of slavery and abolition
(leaving that to the next volume in the series) and is organized around
the rise of a distinctive national identity and literary tradition. While
giving due recognition to the emergence of the slave narrative as a
literary form and to the influence of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin on the events and tenor of the times, for example, the
articles and excerpts in this volume emphasize a different theme:
the birth and infancy of American literature independent of Brit-
ish culture, with a unique voice and perspective, both shaping and
shaped by the task of establishing the new nation.
Careful readers will rightly observe that this did not occur in a mo-
ment or a decade or even a half-century, but that it evolved in phases
and stages over the course of the entire 78-year span. The immediate
post–Revolutionary years naturally placed a high priority on such
practical concerns as establishing a viable government, economy,
and way of life independent of Britain. As even Benjamin Franklin
put it, “To America, one schoolmaster is worth a dozen poets, and
the invention of a machine or the improvement of an implement is
of more importance than a masterpiece. . . .”
William Brown Hill’s novel The Power of Sympathy, said to be the
first written by an American on American soil, was published in
1789, the year of George Washington’s inauguration as the first U.S.
president. In the aftermath of the War of 1812, with the young na-
tion on more secure footing, Washington Irving and James Fenimore
Cooper became the first American writers to win widespread acclaim
Preface ix
in Europe—the former with such short stories as “The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” the latter with his series of
novels called the Leatherstocking Tales, all of them uniquely Ameri-
can in setting, sensibility, and style.
The 1830s gave rise to a new philosophical, literary, and social
movement with a distinctly American character—Transcendentalism.
Forged by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
Margaret Fuller, and their circle of friends, former clergymen, educa-
tors, and thinkers in New England, the movement sought nothing
less than a new relationship between humanity and the universe,
embracing nature, the human imagination, and the inner spiritual
world over organized religion, the dictates of society, or material
well-being.
Noting as well the contributions of the Fireside Poets (William Cul-
len Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier), the Gothic short-
story writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe, and other literary lights—all
represented in the pages that follow—modern literary critics have
pointed to the period from about 1830 to 1861 as the “American
Renaissance” in literature. In a groundbreaking work of literary criti-
cism (American Renaissance, 1941), F.O. Matthiessen focuses on the
five-year period 1850–1855 as the high point of that literary flower-
ing. Remarkably, that short span of years produced such classics as
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the
Seven Gables (1851), Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851), Thoreau’s
Walden (1854), and Walt Whitman’s first edition of Leaves of Grass
(1855), not to mention Emerson’s essay collection Representative Men
(1850), Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), and Longfellow’s “Song of
Hiawatha” (1855), among others.
Inevitably, enduring works of literature such as these stand as vital
documents of political, social, intellectual, and cultural history no
less than as products of individual creative inspiration. The authors
and works presented in this volume, practitioners and prominent
examples of prose fiction, poetry, social commentary, and history,
offer compelling case studies in the study of both history through
literature and literature through history.
