¡Descarga Apuntes página web y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity!
1.- Literary Culture in the Colonies
- Text: Some excerpts from A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
The First Americans 1607-
Most Americans generally assume that our history began in 1607 with the settlement of Jamestown. While that may be true, in that Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America, a great deal had happened before that traditional date. The English had attempted a few settlements that failed, including the well-known one at Roanoke Island in North Carolina. The city of St. Augustine, Florida, predated the English development by over 40 years. Spanish priests and explorers also established settlements or missions in the Southwest. French, English and Dutch explorers visited various parts of North America throughout the 1500s. The Vikings had visited North America centuries earlier. All of the earliest settlements either failed or were abandoned.
This chapter focuses primarily on the English colonization of North America, including, or course, settlements composed of Germans, Dutch, Swedes and others. Here we discuss the early years when the first arrivals began building new lives in the wilderness. The land they discovered was, as is well understood, already inhabited by Indians (so named by Columbus, who thought he had landed in India), and the interaction between Europeans and Native Americans is an important and often tragic component of our development as a nation. That part of our story, it is safe to say, is still being written. The next chapter will focus on the development of relations between the colonies and the mother country, when America became a significant component of the British Empire rather than mere remote settlements spread along the coasts of North America.
The American Southwest
In order to fully appreciate the broader dimensions of American history, one needs to explore the histories of Florida, Mexico, and California in addition to studies focused on the English experience. Several resources are provided below, and they in turn will lead you to others. As the population of America continues to shift from an overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon cast to one of more diversity, the histories of countries that have sent emigrants to America, such as Ireland, Italy, China, and many other nations in Europe and Asia become more interesting. In times of modern communication devices, the world continues to shrink, and the histories and characters of other nations inevitably become more deeply entwined with our own.
This course is not include any extensive treatment of the early development of the American Southwest. That region was primarily a source of exploration for Spanish and Portuguese adventurers. Neither do we cover in any detail the history of Canadian development, except as it interacts with events in British colonial America. we should keep in mind that the southern regions of North America play an increasingly important part in the development of the nation, especially after the revolution. Even during the American Revolution itself, we are accustomed to thinking that thirteen British colonies rebelled against the British Empire. In fact, there were fourteen, as the treaty that ended the Seven Years War awarded the colony of Florida to Great Britain. Not having had any interaction with British government, however, the population of Florida, which was small in any case, did not participate in the rebellion. In 1783 the Florida colony reverted to Spain.
The section immediately below this provides links to some resources regarding the development of the American Southwest.
Mary Rowlandson,
The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)
The image of Indians in New England was shaped both by traditions brought with settlers from Europe and by their experiences with Indians in the New World; however, their (predominantly negative) preconceptions colored almost all interactions. In the European tradition, Indians were either "barbaric and uncvilized heathens" or "noble savages," although the former definition usually won out over the latter. Some Puritans tried to spread Christianity to New England's Indians, but most tribes were distrustful of the settlers because they as often spread disease and dissension among tribes as they spread Christianity. For the settlers' part, nothing reinforced their negative associations with Indians like the tradition of captivity narratives which emerged in early American letters. In 1675, the Wampanoag Chief Metacomet (known as King Philip by the English) expressed his resentment toward the settlers for encroaching on his tribal lands and treating his people disdainfully. The resulting war, known as "King Philip's War", which broke out resulted in a rash of raids throughout New England. In one of these battles, at Lancaster, Massachusetts, the Wampanoag and their Narraganset allies took several settlers captive and held them for ransom; among these captives was Mary White Rowlandson, the wife of a Congregationalist minister, and her three children. Rowlandson remained a prisoner of the Narraganset for several months, during which time she and her two surviving children were forced to live and work as members of the tribe. The Rowlandsons were eventually ransomed and freed before the end of the war, and returned to her husband, who had now relocated to Wethersfield, Connecticut. In part ot make sense of her experience and in part, as she put it, "for the Benefit of the Afflicted," Rowlandson made a record of her captivity which was published after her death. The narrative had the unwieldy original title of The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Together With the Faithfulness of His Promises Displayed; Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Commended by Her, to All That Desires to Know the Lord's Doings to, and Dealings With Her, Especially to Her Dear Children and Relations. The Second Addition Corrected and Amended. Written by Her Own Hand for Her Private Use, and Now Made Public at the Earnest Desire of Some Friends, and for the Benefit of the Afflicted but came to be known as "The Narrative of Mary Rowlandson." The narrative went through countless editions and was one of the most popular books in the eighteenth century; it also spawned a literary tradition of captivity narratives which stretched forward in history even to the contemporary period.
Most of the concrete information about Mary White Rowlandson's life is found in the
autobiographical narrative of her captivity by Indians during King Philip's War. It is fairly certain that she was born in England and brought to the New World by her father, John White. The Whites settled in Lancaster where in 1656 Mary and Reverend Joseph
Rowlandson married. The Rowlandsons lived the next twenty years in Lancaster, working at building a frontier home and a new ministry while raising their three children.
many Puritans emigrated to the New World, where they sought to found a holy
commonwealth in New England. Puritanism remained the dominant cultural force in that area into the 19th century.
Early in the 17th century some Puritan groups separated from the Church of England. Among these were the Pilgrims, who in 1620 founded Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, under the auspices of the Massachusetts Bay Company, the first major Puritan migration to New England took place. The Puritans brought strong religious impulses to bear in all colonies north of Virginia, but New England was their stronghold, and the Congregationalist churches established there were able to perpetuate their viewpoint about a Christian society for more than 200 years.
Richard Mather and John Cotton provided clerical leadership in the dominant Puritan colony planted on Massachusetts Bay. Thomas Hooker was an example of those who settled new areas farther west according to traditional Puritan standards. Even though he broke with the authorities of the Massachusetts colony over questions of religious freedom, Roger Williams was also a true Puritan in his zeal for personal godliness and doctrinal correctness. Most of these men held ideas in the mainstream of Calvinistic thought. In addition to believing in the absolute sovereignty of God, the total depravity of man, and the complete dependence of human beings on divine grace for salvation, they stressed the importance of personal religious experience. These Puritans insisted that they, as God's elect, had the duty to direct national affairs according to God's will as revealed in the Bible. This union of church and state to form a holy commonwealth gave Puritanism direct and exclusive control over most colonial activity until commercial and political changes forced them to relinquish it at the end of the 17th century.
Because of its diffuse nature, when Puritanism began to decline in America is difficult to say. Some would hold that it lost its influence in New England by the early 18th century, but Jonathan Edwards and his able disciple Samuel Hopkins revived Puritan thought and kept it alive until 1800. Others would point to the gradual decline in power of Congregationalism, but Presbyterians under the leadership of Jonathan Dickinson and Baptists led by the example of Isaac Backus (1724–1806) revitalized Puritan ideals in several denominational forms through the 18th century.
During the whole colonial period Puritanism had direct impact on both religious thought and cultural patterns in America. In the 19th century its influence was indirect, but it can still be seen at work stressing the importance of education in religious leadership and demanding that religious motivations be tested by applying them to practical situations.
William Bradford
William Bradford (1590-1657) was a founder and longtime governor of the Plymouth Colony settlement. Born in England, he migrated with the Separatist congregation to the Netherlands as a teenager. Bradford was among the passengers on the Mayflower’s
trans-Atlantic journey, and he signed the Mayflower Compact upon arriving in Massachusetts in 1620. As Plymouth Colony governor for more than thirty years, Bradford helped draft its legal code and facilitated a community centered on private
subsistence agriculture and religious tolerance. Around 1630, he began to compile his
two-volume “Of Plymouth Plantation,” one of the most important early chronicles of the settlement of New England.
Born of substantial yeomen in Yorkshire, England, Bradford expressed his nonconformist religious sensibilities in his early teens and joined the famed Separatist church in Scrooby at the age of seventeen. In 1609 he immigrated with the congregation, led by John Robinson, to the Netherlands. For the next eleven years he and his fellow religious dissenters lived in Leyden until their fear of assimilation into Dutch culture prompted them to embark on the Mayflower for the voyage to North America.
William Bradford's descendants include Noah Webster, Julia Child and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist.
The Pilgrims arrived in what became Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1621 with a large number of non-Separatist settlers. Before disembarking, the congregation drew up the first New World social contract, the Mayflower Compact, which all the male settlers signed.
Bradford served thirty one-year terms as governor of the fledgling colony between 1622 and 1656. He enjoyed remarkable discretionary powers as chief magistrate, acting as high judge and treasurer as well as presiding over the deliberations of the General Court, the legislature of the community. In 1636 he helped draft the colony’s legal code. Under his guidance Plymouth never became a Bible commonwealth like its larger and more influential neighbor, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Relatively tolerant of dissent, the Plymouth settlers did not restrict the franchise or other civic privileges to church members. The Plymouth churches were overwhelmingly Congregationalist and Separatist in form, but Presbyterians like William Vassal and renegades like Roger Williams resided in the colony without being pressured to conform to the majority’s religious convictions.
After a brief experiment with the “common course,” a sort of primitive agrarian communism, the colony quickly centered around private subsistence agriculture. This was facilitated by Bradford’s decision to distribute land among all the settlers, not just members of the company. In 1627 he and four others assumed the colony’s debt to the merchant adventurers who had helped finance their immigration in return for a monopoly of the fur trading and fishing industries. Owing to some malfeasance on the part of their English mercantile factors and the decline of the fur trade, Bradford and his colleagues were unable to retire this debt until 1648, and then only at great personal expense.
Around 1630 Bradford began to compile his two-volume Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, one of the most important early chronicles of the settlement of New England. Bradford’s history was singular in its tendency to separate religious from secular concerns. Unlike similar tracts from orthodox Massachusetts Bay, Bradford did
The role of women is a common theme found in Bradstreet's poems. Living in a Puritan
society, Bradstreet did not approve of the stereotypical idea that women were inferior to men during the 1600's. Women were expected to spend all their time cooking, cleaning, taking care of their children, and attending to their husband's every need. In her poem In
Honour of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory, Bradstreet questions this belief. A reoccurring theme in Bradstreet's work is mortality. In many of her works, she talks
about her own death and how it will affect her children and her wife. The reoccurrence of this mortality theme can be viewed as autobiographical. Because her work was not intended for the public, she was referring to her own medical problems and her belief
that she would die.
Nature is also a recurring theme throughout Bradstreet's works. She is constantly displaying the close relationship between nature and God. Her belief that nature is a gift
from the Divine shines through in most of her poems.
3.- Revolution and the Republic: Benjamin Franklin and Philip
Freneau
Subjects of discussion to be presented in class:
**- Enlightenment in 18th-century America.
- American Statesmen-Philosophers.**
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
The American Revolution (1775-83) is also known as the American Revolutionary War and the U.S. War of Independence. The conflict arose from growing tensions between
residents of Great Britain’s 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown. Skirmishes between British troops and colonial militiamen in Lexington and Concord in April 1775 kicked off the armed conflict, and
by the following summer, the rebels were waging a full-scale war for their independence. France entered the American Revolution on the side of the colonists in 1778, turning what had essentially been a civil war into an international conflict. After
French assistance helped the Continental Army force the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, the Americans had effectively won their independence, though
fighting would not formally end until 1783.
For more than a decade before the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775,
tensions had been building between colonists and the British authorities. Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies (notably the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Tariffs of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773) met with heated
protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects. Colonial resistance led to violence in 1770, when British soldiers opened fire on a mob of colonists, killing five
men in what was known as the Boston Massacre. After December 1773, when a band of Bostonians dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor, an outraged Parliament passed a series of measures (known as
the Intolerable, or Coercive Acts) designed to reassert imperial authority in Massachusetts.
In response, a group of colonial delegates (including George Washington of Virginia,
John and Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Patrick Henry of Virginia and John Jay of New York) met in Philadelphia in September 1774 to give voice to their grievances against the British crown. This First Continental Congress did not go so far as to
demand independence from Britain, but it denounced taxation without representation, as well as the maintenance of the British army in the colonies without their consent, and issued a declaration of the rights due every citizen, including life, liberty, property,
assembly and trial by jury. The Continental Congress voted to meet again in May 1775 to consider further action, but by that time violence had already broken out. On April
19, local militiamen clashed with British soldiers in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, marking the first shots fired in the Revolutionary War.
DECLARING INDEPENDENCE (1775-76)
When the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia, delegates–including new additions Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson–voted to form a Continental Army, with Washington as its commander in chief. On June 17, in the Revolution’s first major battle, colonial forces inflicted heavy casualties on the British regiment of General William Howe at Breed’s Hill in Boston. The engagement (known as the Battle of Bunker Hill) ended in British victory, but lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause. Throughout that fall and winter, Washington’s forces struggled to keep the British contained in Boston, but artillery captured at Fort Ticonderoga in New York helped shift the balance of that struggle in late winter. The British evacuated the city in March 1776, with Howe and his men retreating to Canada to prepare a major invasion of New York.
By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4, the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, drafted by a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by Jefferson. That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New York. In August, Howe’s Redcoats routed the Continental Army on Long Island; Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York City by September. Pushed across the Delaware River, Washington fought back with a surprise attack in Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas night and won another victory at Princeton to revive the rebels’ flagging hopes before making winter quarters at Morristown.
inventor and scientist propelled him to the front ranks of Philadelphia society and made him a well-known figure throughout the American provinces and England. In 1757, at age fifty-one Franklin, began his career as a diplomat and statesman in London where he essentially remained until the outbreak of the American Revolution. When Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1775, he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress, where he was instrumental in drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. Because of his international experience, Franklin was chosen as one the first ministers to France. In Paris Franklin reached his peak of fame, becoming the focal point for a cultural Franklin-mania among the French intellectual elite. Franklin ultimately helped negotiate a cessation of hostilities and a peace treaty that officially ended the Revolutionary War.
Even after his death in 1790, Franklin remained an American celebrity. Shortly after his death, his now famous autobiography was published in France and was followed two years later by British and American editions. Perhaps, the last, best summary should be the simple words of James Madison taken from his notes on Franklin: "I never passed half an hour in his company without hearing some observations or anecdote worth remembering.”
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the tenth son of Josiah, a candle purveyor, and Abiah Folger. Educated at Boston Grammar School, Benjamin apprenticed with his father, and then his half-brother, Peter, a controversial printer in Boston. Young Franklin struck out on his own in 1723 eventually finding employment as a journeyman printer in Philadelphia. By 1730, he controlled his own printing shop and published The Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper, had fathered a son, William, and married Deborah Read Rogers.
“Join, or Die”
Benjamin Franklin published this woodcut in the Pennsylvania Gazette, which represents America as a snake severed into various provinces. Prior to the outbreak of the French and Indian War, Franklin hoped to persuade the American colonies to unite their governments to protect themselves from the French and their Native American allies under a plan later known as “The Albany Plan,” which was ultimately rejected. The image, the first to address unification of the colonies, would later be used as a symbol of the American Revolution with the motto: “Don't Tread On Me.”
Magna Britannia
This vivid allegorical cartoon, which illustrates the fatal effects on the empire that would result from taxing the colonies, was designed by Franklin in 1766. Franklin printed the image on cards that he distributed to Parliament during the debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act. This broadside carries a text that reads: “The Moral is, that the Colonies may be ruined, but that Britain would thereby be maimed.” Both the card and the broadside version, with the explanation and moral, are extremely rare.
Subverting the Stamp Act
On October 31, 1765, the publishers announced the suspension of the Pennsylvania Gazette in protest of the provisions of the Stamp Act, which required that newspapers be printed on imported, stamped paper that required payment of a duty. Between November 7 and December 26, Franklin's partner David Hall issued news sheets on unstamped paper without a masthead, thus avoiding legal repercussions while satisfying the subscribers.
Franklin Supports the 1765 Stamp Act
Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania agent and deputy postmaster general in North America, initially supported the Stamp Act of 1765, by which Parliament levied a new tax on British colonies. Although the tax would not raise much money, the British chancellor of the Exchequer Sir George Grenville wanted a declaration of Parliament's sovereign right to tax the colonists. Franklin became an opponent when he learned of the fervent colonial opposition.
Stamp Act Repeal in 1766
In this letter sent from London, Franklin thanks his old friend and Philadelphia neighbor for endorsing his conduct in regard to the repeal of the Stamp Act. Although Franklin, as Pennsylvania's agent in London, had briefly supported the new tax on America, he quickly switched to opposition after hearing of the angry response in Pennsylvania. Franklin attributed America's success in obtaining the repeal “to what the Profane would call Luck & the Pious Providence.”
Franklin and the King and Queen of France
Benjamin Franklin was visiting France in 1767 when he wrote this letter to Mary (Polly) Stevenson, the intellectually curious daughter of his British landlady, Margaret Stevenson (ca. 1706–1783), describing in words and a drawing his experience at a public supper with the French King Louis XV and Queen Marie, who spoke to Franklin "Very graciously and cheerfully."
Franklin began his career as a diplomat and statesman when he went to London in 1757 as an agent of the Pennsylvania assembly and became an absentee deputy British postmaster for North America. There he remained, except for a brief return to Philadelphia, until the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, serving as an American provincial agent and pursuing his interests as an inventor, scientist, and author. In London, Franklin gradually ceased his support for British rule and became an American revolutionary.
“It is impossible we should think of Submission”
Just days after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by Congress, Benjamin Franklin wrote this stinging rebuke to the commander of British naval forces in North America and peace commissioner, Lord Richard Howe, who had offered pardons to American political leaders. The offer was rejected. Franklin replied that “It is impossible we should think of Submission to a Government” that has inflicted “atrocious Injuries” on Americans.
Constitutions of the Thirteen States of America
Several weeks before the Treaty of Paris, Franklin arranged for the translation and publication of the thirteen state constitutions along with other founding documents and treaties of commerce and alliance. Believing the publication would be influential in supporting recognition of the new country by European powers, he had sumptuously bound copies presented to the French king and queen and all the French foreign ministers. The Great Seal of the United States, approved by Congress in June 1782, made its first printed appearance here. This copy is personally inscribed by Franklin to the translator.
Benjamin Franklin Parodied
This British cartoon appeared in London early in 1783 just after the preliminary treaty of peace ending the American Revolution became known in Great Britain. Allegorical figures of Britain and America support a pole crowned with a liberty cap. Benjamin Franklin leads a chorus that includes the Whig ministers Charles James Fox and Lord Shelburne, who made peace with the United States. The American traitor Benedict Arnold appears as a serpent, with a noose over his head.
“The Hypocrisy of this Country”
Benjamin Franklin, despite having brought two Black slaves to England in 1757, became an eager supporter and correspondent of Anthony Benezet, the Philadelphia abolitionist and educator, who had written important anti-slavery pamphlets, books, and newspaper articles. As president of the Pennsylvania anti-slavery society, Franklin appealed for public support of a humanitarian plan to not only emancipate slaves, but to educate free blacks and their children and to facilitate their progress toward good citizenship.
Restoring Harmony
When delegates became heated over the issue of proportional representation at the Federal Constitutional Convention in 1787 at Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin urged “great Coolness and Temper,” telling the delegates “we are sent here to consult, not to contend, with each other.” As the eldest delegate at the Convention, Franklin acted on several occasions to restore harmony.
President of Pennsylvania
Benjamin Franklin was chosen president of Pennsylvania shortly after his 1785 return from France. The bulk of Franklin's presidential duties included signing land grants, such as this 1787 bill of sale, and performing ceremonial functions.
A Copy of the Federal Constitution
Benjamin Franklin enclosed a copy of the new federal constitution with this letter to Thomas Jefferson, the American minister to France, and thanked him for the receipt of a box of books.
“A Much More Respectable Bird”
Benjamin Franklin criticized the new American hereditary military order of the Society of Cincinnati in this long letter to his daughter, Sarah Franklin Bache. He was particularly critical of the Society's symbol, featuring “a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turk' y. For in Truth, the Turk'y is in comparison a much more respectable Bird.”
The “growing Strength” of the United States
In his eighty-fourth year, seven months before his death, an ailing Franklin writes to the nation's first president George Washington: “For my own personal case, I should have died two years ago; but tho' those years have been spent in excruciating pain, I am pleased that I have lived them since they brought me to see our present situation.”
Benjamin Franklin
This portrait, which depicts Franklin as a learned scientist and inventor, was one of his favorites. Pictured on the left is the signal-bell apparatus Franklin devised to detect the presence of electrically-charged clouds. The bolt of lightning , seen through the open window, became an attribute closely identified with Franklin. At Franklin's death French philosopher/scientist Jacques Turgot wrote: “He seized the lightning from the sky and the scepter from the hand of tyrants.”
The Franklin Stove
Franklin wrote this description of the stove he had invented to promote sales of a model being manufactured by his friend Robert Grace. A series of partitioned iron plates permits a continuous supply of fresh warm air, separated from the smoke, to be distributed equally throughout the room. By controlling the airflow, less heat is lost, and much less wood is needed. Franklin's stove became so popular in England and Europe that this essay was frequently reprinted and translated into several foreign languages.
On Electricity
Benjamin Franklin's formulation of a general theory of electrical “action” won him an international reputation in pure science in his own day. Writing to Dutch physician and scientist Jan Ingenhousz, Franklin responds to a number of his friend's questions about electricity and the Leyden jar, an early form of electrical condenser. In this draft scientific report, it appears that Franklin wrote his answers first using dark ink, leaving room for the questions, which he wrote in red ink.
For most people, Franklin's fame as a writer and printer rests on Poor Richard's Almanack which is commonly recognized for the wit and wisdom spun by Franklin under the pseudonym Richard Saunders. But Benjamin Franklin's accomplishments were far greater. He was considered the most accomplished printer in Colonial America. His 1744 edition of Cicero's Cato Major... is the finest example of early American printing. Not content with a successful career as a writer/printer, Franklin promoted a host of Philadelphia educational and benevolent societies including the founding of the city's first lending library.
Apuntes de clase:
Republic:
A site Freneau frequented in Matawan is now in use as a restaurant. From 1961 until 2008, it operated as "The Poet's Inn", to honor Freneau's memory. The business has since changed hands several times and building has been renovated and added on to over the years, and is now a popular bar and grill. [4]
Freneau is an unincorporated community within Matawan which is named for Freneau.
Knickerbocker School
The Fourth of July orator for 1826 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was Edward Everett. Although only thirty-two he was already a distinguished speaker. In the course of his oration he apostrophized John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as venerable survivors of that momentous day, fifty years earlier, which had witnessed our Declaration of Independence. But even as Everett was speaking, the aged author of the Declaration breathed his last at Monticello, and in the afternoon of that same day Adams died also, murmuring, it is said, with his latest breath, and as if with the whimsical obstinacy of an old man who hated to be beaten by his ancient rival, “Thomas Jefferson still lives.” But Jefferson was already gone.
On the first of August, Everett commemorated the career of the two Revolutionary leaders, and on the following day a greater than Everett, Daniel Webster, pronounced the famous eulogy in Faneuil Hall. Never were the thoughts and emotions of a whole country more adequately voiced than in this commemorative oratory. Its pulse was high with national pride over the accomplishments of half a century. “I ask,” Everett declared, “whether more has not been done to extend the domain of civilization, in fifty years, since the Declaration of Independence, than would have been done in five centuries of continued colonial subjection?” Webster asserted in his peroration: “It cannot be denied, but by those who would dispute against the sun, that with America, and in America, a new era commences in human affairs. This era is distinguished by free representative governments, by entire religious liberty, by improved systems of national intercourse, by a newly awakened and an unconquerable spirit of free enquiry, and by a diffusion of knowledge through the community such as has been before altogether unknown and unheard of.”
Was this merely the “tall talk” then so characteristic of American oratory and soon to be satirized in “Martin Chuzzlewit”? Or was it prompted by a deep and true instinct for the significance of the vast changes that had come over American life since 1776? The external changes were familiar enough to Webster’s auditors: the opening of seemingly illimitable territory through the Louisiana Purchase, the development of roads, canals, and manufactures; a rapid increase in wealth and population; a shifting of political power due to the rise of the new West–in a word, the evidences of irrepressible national energy. But this energy was inadequately expressed by the national literature. The more cultivated Americans were quite aware of this deficiency. It was confessed by the pessimistic Fisher Ames and by the ardent young men who in 1815 founded “The North American Review.” British critics in “The Edinburgh” and “The Quarterly,” commenting upon recent works of travel in America, pointed out the literary poverty of the American soil. Sydney Smith, by no means the most offensive of these critics, declared in 1820: “During the thirty or forty years of their independence they have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the arts, for literature.... In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?”
Sydney Smith’s question “Who reads an American book?” has outlived all of his own clever volumes. Even while he was asking it, London was eagerly reading Irving’s “Sketch Book.” In 1821 came Fenimore Cooper’s Spy and Bryant’s “Poems,” and by
1826, when Webster was announcing in his rolling orotund that Adams and Jefferson were no more, the London and Paris booksellers were covering their stalls with Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans." Irving, Cooper, and Bryant are thus the pioneers in a new phase of American literary activity, often called, for convenience in labeling, the Knickerbocker Group because of the identification of these men with New York. And close behind these leaders come a younger company, destined likewise, in the shy boyish words of Hawthorne, one of the number, “to write books that would be read in England.” For by 1826 Hawthorne and Longfellow were out of college and were trying to learn to write. Ticknor, Prescott, and Bancroft, somewhat older men, were settling to their great tasks. Emerson was entering upon his duties as a minister. Edgar Allan Poe, at that University of Virginia which Jefferson had just founded, was doubtless revising “Tamerlane and Other Poems” which he was to publish in Boston in the following year. Holmes was a Harvard undergraduate. Garrison had just printed Whittier’s first published poem in the Newburyport “Free Press.” Walt Whitman was a barefooted boy on Long Island, and Lowell, likewise seven years of age, was watching the birds in the treetops of Elmwood. But it was Washington Irving who showed all of these men that nineteenth century England would be interested in American books.
The very word Knickerbocker is one evidence of the vitality of Irving’s happy imaginings. In 1809 he had invented a mythical Dutch historian of New York named Diedrich Knickerbocker and fathered upon him a witty parody of Dr. Mitchill’s grave “Picture of New York.” To read Irving’s chapters today is to witness one of the rarest and most agreeable of phenomena, namely, the actual beginning of a legend which the world is unwilling to let die. The book made Sir Walter Scott’s sides ache with laughter, and reminded him of the humor of Swift and Sterne. But certain New Yorkers were slow to see the joke.
Irving was himself a New Yorker, born just at the close of the Revolution, of a Scotch father and English mother. His youth was pleasantly idle, with a little random education, much theater-going, and plentiful rambles with a gun along the Hudson River. In 1804 he went abroad for his health, returned and helped to write the light social satire of the “Salmagundi Papers,” and became, after the publication of the “Knickerbocker History,” a local celebrity. Sailing for England in 1815 on business, he stayed until 1832 as a roving man of letters in England and Spain and then as Secretary of the American Legation in London. “The Sketch Book,” “Bracebridge Hall,” and “Tales of a Traveler” are the best known productions of Irving’s fruitful residence in England. The “Life of Columbus,” the “Conquest of Granada,” and “The Alhambra” represent his first sojourn in Spain. After his return to America he became fascinated with the Great West, made the travels described in his “Tour of the Prairies,” and told the story of roving trappers and the fur trade in “Captain Bonneville” and “Astoria.” For four years he returned to Spain as American Minister. In his last tranquil years at Sunnyside on the Hudson, where he died in 1859, he wrote graceful lives of Goldsmith and of Washington.
Such a glance at the shelf containing Irving’s books suggests but little of that personal quality to which he owes his significance as an interpreter of America to the Old World. This son of a narrow, hard, Scotch dealer in cutlery, this drifter about town when New York was only a big slovenly village, this light-hearted scribbler of satire and sentiment, was a gentleman born. His boyhood and youth were passed in that period of Post- Revolutionary reaction which exhibits the United States in some of its most unlovely aspects. Historians like Henry Adams and McMaster have painted in detail the low estate of education, religion, and art as the new century began. The bitter feeling of the nascent nation toward Great Britain was intensified by the War of 1812. The Napoleonic Wars had threatened to break the last threads of our friendship for France, and suspicion of the Holy Alliance led to an era of national self-assertion of which the Monroe
his personal experiences of forest and sea and to reveal to Europe the real romance of the American wilderness.
That Cooper was the first to perceive the artistic possibilities of this romance, no one would claim. Brockden Brown, a Quaker youth of Philadelphia, a disciple of the English Godwin, had tried his hand at the very end of the eighteenth century upon American variations of the Gothic romance then popular in England. Brown had a keen eye for the values of the American landscape and even of the American Indian. He had a knack for passages of ghastly power, as his descriptions of maniacs, murderers, sleep- walkers, and solitaries abundantly prove. But he had read too much and lived too little to rival the masters of the art of fiction. And there was a traveled Frenchman, Chateaubriand, surely an expert in the art of eloquent prose, who had transferred to the pages of his American Indian stories, “Atala” and “Rene,” the mystery and enchantment of our dark forests and endless rivers. But Chateaubriand, like Brockden Brown, is feverish. A taint of old-world eroticism and despair hovers like a miasma over his magnificent panorama of the wilderness. Cooper, like Scott, is masculine.
He was a Knickerbocker only by adoption. Born in New Jersey, his childhood was spent in the then remote settlement of Cooperstown in Central New York. He had a little schooling at Albany, and a brief and inglorious career at Yale with the class of 1806. He went to sea for two years, and then served for three years in the United States Navy upon Lakes Ontario and Champlain, the very scene of some of his best stories. In 1811 he married, resigned from the Navy, and settled upon a little estate in Westchester County, near New York. Until the age of thirty, he was not in the least a bookman, but a healthy, man of action. Then, as the well-known anecdote goes, he exclaims to his wife, after reading a stupid English novel, “I believe I could write a better story myself.” “Precaution” (1820) was the result, but whether it was better than the unknown English book, no one can now say. It was bad enough. Yet the next year Cooper published “The Spy,” one of the finest of his novels, which was instantly welcomed in England and translated in France. Then came, in swift succession, “The Pioneers,” the first Leather- Stocking tale in order of composition, and “The Pilot,” to show that Scott’s “Pirate” was written by a landsman! “Lionel Lincoln” and “The Last of the Mohicans” followed. The next seven years were spent in Europe, mainly in France, where “The Prairie” and “The Red Rover” were written. Cooper now looked back upon his countrymen with eyes of critical detachment, and made ready to tell them some of their faults. He came home to Cooperstown in 1833, the year after Irving’s return to America. He had won, deservedly, a great fame, which he proceeded to imperil by his combativeness with his neighbors and his harsh strictures upon the national character, due mainly to his lofty conception of the ideal America. He continued to spin yarns of sea and shore, and to write naval history. The tide of fashion set against him in the eighteen-forties when Bulwer and Dickens rode into favor, but the stouthearted old pioneer could afford to bide his time. He died in 1851, just as Mrs. Stowe was writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Two generations have passed since then, and Cooper’s place in our literature remains secure. To have written our first historical novel, “The Spy,” our first sea-story, “The Pilot,” and to have created the Leather-Stocking series, is glory enough. In his perception of masculine character, Cooper ranks with Fielding. His sailors, his scouts and spies, his good and bad Indians, are as veritable human figures as Squire Western. Long Tom Coffin, Harvey Birch, Hawk-Eye, and Chingachgook are physically and morally true to life itself. Read the Leather-Stocking books in the order of the events described, beginning with “The Deerslayer,” then “The Last of the Mohicans,” “The Pathfinder," “The Pioneers”, and ending with the vast darkening horizon of “The Prairie” and the death of the trapper, and one will feel how natural and inevitable are the fates of the personages and the alterations in the life of the frontier. These books vary in
their poetic quality and in the degree of their realism, but to watch the evolution of the leading figure is to see human life in its actual texture.
Clever persons and pedantic persons have united to find fault with certain elements of Cooper’s art. Mark Twain, in one of his least inspired moments, selected Cooper’s novels for attack. Every grammar school teacher is ready to point out that his style is often prolix and his sentences are sometimes ungrammatical. Amateurs even criticize Cooper’s seamanship, although it seemed impeccable to Admiral Mahan. No doubt one must admit the “helplessness, propriety, and incapacity” of most of Cooper’s women, and the dreadfulness of his bores, particularly the Scotchmen, the doctors, and the naturalists. Like Sir Walter, Cooper seems to have taken but little pains in the deliberate planning of his plots. Frequently he accepts a ready-made formula of villain and hero, predicament and escape, renewed crisis and rescue, mystification and explanation, worthy of a third-rate novelist. His salvation lies in his genius for action, the beauty and grandeur of his landscapes, the primitive veracity of his children of nature. Cooper was an elemental man, and he comprehended, by means of something deeper than mere artistic instinct, the feelings of elemental humanity in the presence of the wide ocean or of the deep woods. He is as healthy and sane as Fielding, and he possesses an additional quality which all of the purely English novelists lack. It was the result of his youthful sojourn in the wilderness. Let us call it the survival in him of an aboriginal imagination. Cooper reminds one somehow of a moose–an ungraceful creature perhaps, but indubitably big, as many a hunter has suddenly realized when he has come unexpectedly upon a moose that whirled to face him in the twilight silence of a northern wood.
Something of this far-off and gigantic primitivism inheres also in the poetry of William Cullen Bryant. His portrait, with the sweeping white beard and the dark folds of the cloak, suggests the Bard as the Druids might have known him. But in the eighteen- thirties and forties, Mr. Bryant’s alert, clean-shaven face, and energetic gait as he strode down Broadway to the “Evening Post” office, suggested little more than a vigorous and somewhat radical editor of an increasingly prosperous Democratic newspaper. There was nothing of the Fringed Gentian or Yellow Violet about him. Like so many of the Knickerbockers, Bryant was an immigrant to New York; in fact, none of her adopted men of letters have represented so perfectly the inherited traits of the New England Puritan. To understand his long, and honorable public life it is necessary to know something of the city of his choice, but to enter into the spirit of his poetry one must go back to the hills of western Massachusetts.
Bryant had a right to his cold-weather mind. He came from Mayflower stock. His father, Dr. Peter Bryant of Cummington, was a sound country physician, with liberal preferences in theology, Federalist views in politics, and a library of seven hundred volumes, rich in poetry. The poet’s mother records his birth in her diary in terse words which have the true Spartan tang: “Nov. 3, 1794. Stormy, wind N. E. Churned. Seven in the evening a son born.” Two days later the November wind shifted. “Nov. 5, 1794. Clear, wind N. W. Made Austin a coat. Sat up all day. Went into the kitchen.” The baby, it appears, had an abnormally large head and was dipped, day after day, in rude hydropathy, into an icy spring. A precocious childhood was followed by a stern, somewhat unhappy, but aspiring boyhood. The little fellow, lying prone with his brothers before the firelight of the kitchen, reading English poetry from his father’s library, used to pray that he too might become a poet. At thirteen he produced a satire on Jefferson, “The Embargo,” which his proud Federalist father printed at Boston in 1808. The youth had nearly one year at Williams College, over the mountain ranges to the west. He wished to continue his education at Yale, but his father had no money for this greater venture, and the son remained at home. There, in the autumn of 1811, on the
