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
Thomas Cole, View of the Catskills- Early Autumn

8. Albert Bierdstadt
Albert Bierdstadt- Merced River, Yosemite Valley

9. Martin Johnson Heade
Martin Johnson Meade- Newburyport Meadows

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