The American Mind in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

EXCERPT: "The half century between the War of 1812 and the Civil War was above all an age of expansiveness in America. Whether measured in terms of population, territory, urbanization, economic growth, technological development, democratization, or nationalism, American society was transformed quantitatively and qualitatively at a spectacular rate. What Americans thought about themselves, their country, and their universe was always tightly linked to the changes they confronted, and the ideas they shared and disputed were both a product of and a commentary upon the expanding political, social, and economic democracy of the period. Strictly speaking, of course, there was no "American mind" during this period, since Americans were then, as they are now, of many minds. Child and adult, man and woman, native and foreign born, Northerner and Southerner, slave and citizen-everyone who lived in America lived in a world of ideas and values shaped in part by a particular history and particular circumstances. However, as Tocqueville observed after visiting America in the 1830s, the citizens of any vigorous society are usually "rallied and held together by certain predominant ideas." Except for the chapter on the slave-holding South, we will be concerned here with the dominant ideas and values most Americans shared and identified with their new nation during the years from 1815 to 1860."

One: Interpreting American Democratic Thought 1 Two: Religion, Philosophy, and Science in the American Democracy 6 Religion 7 William Ellery Channing 9 Charles Grandison Finney 13 Horace Bushnell 15 Philosophy 19 The Academic Mind 20 The Transcendental Mind: Emerson 22 Science 27 Three: Political and Social Thought in the American Democracy 35 The Mind of the Jacksonians 36 William Leggett 39 George Bancroft 41 The Reform Impulse 42 Henry Thoreau: The Transcendentalist as Critic and Reformer 47 Wendell Phillips: The Rationale for Agitation 52 The Grimke Sisters and the Birth of Feminism 59 Conservatism and Democracy 65 Daniel Webster and National Conservation 66 Abraham Lincoln and Democratic Conservatism 74 Four: The Mind of the South 83 The Democratic Mind in the South 84 The Southern Mind as Apologist for Slavery 89 John C. Calhoun 91 George Fitzhugh 97 The Reactionary Enlightenment 102 The Mind of the Slave 104 Five: The Democratic Imagination 108 P.T. Barnum: The Showman as Artist 108 An American Literature 112 Walt Whitman: The Democrat as Poet 115 The Novel in America 121 Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Democrat as Puritan 123 Herman Melville: The Democrat as Skeptic 127 Six: Conclusion 132 Bibliographical Essay 136 Index 145