Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Antebellum Period - Coggle Diagram
Antebellum Period
General information
-
-
Geographical expansion is an important part of the era —> the nation added large territories west of the Mississippi to the national terrain —> time of national expansion & in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ends the U.S.-Mexican War, added another 1.2 million square miles in the Southwest and West.
-
The geographical expansion lead to sectional conflicts and debates about the political outlook and organization of the nation —> important question was whether slavery should be permitted or not
Other conflicts arose regarding the balance between state and federal powers as well as national tariffs. Eventually, these conflicts led to the Civil War (1861- 1865), which ended the antebellum period
Geographical growth and technical developments lead to a revolution in transportation —> Erie canal, railroad tracks —> urbanization
Enormous growth in population —> much of this growth in population was based on immigration from Europe
Technical development and improvement —> printing press, telegraph, steam engine
Expansion of the national book and print market because of technological improvements, the revolution in transportation, the growth of the population, urbanization, and an increase in the traditionally high literacy rate —> opened up opportunities for American authors
Human progress —> humans believed in human improvement —> different cultural movements, e.g. the women right movements —> time of optimism; they wanted to change something
It was a time of great optimism —> “progress” was a catchword of that time and the belief in the possibility of improvement
Movements
-
-
-
woman's movement --> they asked for reforms on their own behalf in terms of their social, legal, and political situation
The epitome of this first phase of the woman's movement was the 1848 convention at Seneca Falls, New York, and the "Declaration of Sentiments," which demanded more legal rights and divorce rights for women along with equal education. Most importantly, the antebellum women's movement demanded the political vote for women.
Transcendentalism
The Transcendentalist movement also participated in the spirit of reform that marked the antebellum period.
Transcendentalism, in a U.S. context, refers to a heterogeneous group of intellectuals and writers who produced their most important work from the 1830s to ca. 1860.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) is considered the most important transcendentalist - he supported many of the antebellum reform movements, but put his greatest emphasis on personal, rather than public, reform
The term transcendentalism reflects the group's joint commitment to the attempt to transcend the boundaries of established conventions and ways of thinking
The transcendentalists drew electrically on various ideas of their time, including romantic beliefs and they put a great emphasis on individualism
American Renaissance
American Renaissance is a term used by literary scholars to describe what has been considered a first flourishing of American literature
This first flourishing is associated with works that appeared from ca. the mid-1830s to the early 1860s
Many of the authors whom scholars have associated with this ostensible "rebirth" were inspired by American transcendentalism
Both transcendentalist authors and the authors of the American Renaissance display important characteristics of the literary movement of romanticism that developed in Europe in the late 18th century. These include romanticism's emphasis on the power of the imagination, on subjectivity, on individuality, he interest in artistic creation and the dark sides of the human psyche.
The term "Renaissance" itself is misleading and to some extent paradoxical in the ways in which it establishes continuities and discontinuities with European (literary) culture