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Home , Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American Dream in the Nineteenth Century

Introduction The American dream of the nineteenth century was marked by a heightened sense of individu- alism and self-interest—a natural response to America’s relatively new from British rule. With a mere twenty-five years of independ- ence behind them, Americans entered the 1800s intent on exploring the vast wilderness that lay west of their former colonies. This frontier mind- set called for a rugged that quickly replaced the community-oriented thinking that once motivated the American colonists. With the push west came the forced expulsion of Native Americans and, later, a frenzied scramble for California gold. Nineteenth-century Americans also witnessed wave upon wave of immigration, the nightmare of the Civil War, and a period of industrialization that seemed to alter the American economy and culture overnight. Competitiveness took the place of cooperation as Americans fought to control the development and seize the wealth of their hard-won country. In this century of rapid expansion, the notion of the ‘‘self-made man’’ took on a new meaning.

The American Frontier One of the first to explore the American West was Meriwether Lewis. Raised between Virginia’s frontier and its settlements, young Lewis learned wilderness skills, including how to hunt and fish, and was also exposed to refined plantation soci- ety, from which he acquired knowledge about

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surveying, geography, and natural . After serving in the Virginia militia, Lewis rose through the ranks to become President Jefferson’s private secretary. In 1803, Jefferson sent Lewis to Pennsylvania to be trained in the areas of astron- omy, mathematics, , paleontology, and biol- ogy. Lewis, his expeditionary partner, William Clark, and their men set off for the western wilder- ness in the spring of 1804 to explore the Louisiana Purchase—land west of the Mississippi river recently acquired from France. On November 8, 1805, Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific Ocean; when they returned home on September 23, 1806, they brought with them a wealth of information. Lewis and Clark recorded their findings in minute detail in a series of journals that have come to be known as The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Excerpts such as the following reveal how respectful and friendly relations were between the white explorers and their Native American counterparts:

While Sacajawea was renewing among the women the friendships of former days, Captain Clark went on, and was received by Captain Lewis and the chief, who after the first embraces Davy Crockett ª Bettmann/Corbis and salutations were over, conducted him to a sort of circular tent or shade of willows. Here he wasseatedonawhiterobe;andthechiefimme- diately tied in his hair six small shells resembling pearls, an ornament highly valued by these peo- A survey of American frontier literature ple, who procure them in the course of trade would not be complete without mentioning A from the sea-coast. The moccasins of the whole Narrative of the Life of David Crockett. party were then taken off, and after much cere- According to Paul Andrew Hutton’s introduc- mony the smoking began. tion from the 1987 University of Nebraska Press Meriwether Lewis and his expeditionary jour- edition of the autobiography, nals provided fodder for proper writers to explore the nineteenth-century American dream of taming [The Narrative] falls within the tradition of American autobiography pioneered by the West—if only on paper. James Fenimore . Like Franklin’s work, it is Cooper, credited as being one of America’s first peculiarly American in form and tone, recount- professional writers, did just that in his historically ing one of the most beloved of our national influenced novels. His most widely recognized obsessions: the success story of the self-made work, The Last of the Mohicans (1826), draws man. It is also a literary and folk document, from wilderness themes borrowed from Lewis capturing the humor and backcountry dialect and actual events that occurred before, during, eventually enshrined in our highest literary tra- ditions by . and after the War of 1812. Cooper’s epic was one of the most popular English-language novels The autobiography, co-authored by Crock- of the era. The novel’s main character, Nathaniel ett’s congressional colleague, Thomas Chilton, ‘‘Natty’’ Bumppo, or ‘‘Hawkeye,’’ personifies the documents the American frontier of rugged individualism that was quickly defining the the first half of the 1800s. It describes Crockett’s new American identity. In her biographical early life growing up in eastern Tennessee on Cooper, Jill Anderson describes the Bumppo through his moves westward, his experiences in character as ‘‘a white man who resisted the the Creek War, his infamous hunting trips—he onslaught of American civilization and law and allegedly killed 105 ‘‘b’ars’’ in one season—and who wanted only to live in harmony with his political appointments as Tennessee House like his Indian friends.’’ Representative and U.S. congressman. The

510 Literary Themes for Students: The American Dream, Volume 2 The American Dream in the Nineteenth Century book ends before his fateful journey to the is Thoreau’s account of the two Alamo, where he died in 1836. years he spent living in solitude on the shore of Walden in Concord, . According to the first lines of the first chapter, ‘‘I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any Once the American geographical landscape had neighbor, in a house which I had built myself ... been conquered, time was ripe for an exploration and earned my living by the labor of my hands of the American psyche. If the literature of Lewis only.’’ The book’s chapter headings hint at and Cooper is regarded as a study of the differ- Thoreau’s general topics of interest—economy, ence between the old and the new America, then reading, sounds, solitude—but at its heart, was one of the first new Walden is a call for higher living. In the appro- American writers. Once the frontier was tamed, priately titled chapter, ‘‘Higher Laws,’’ Thoreau rugged individualism became somewhat more writes, refined and the wilderness was given a far less All nature is your congratulation, and you have fearsome name: nature. This happened in 1836 cause momentarily to bless yourself. The great- when Emerson, a self-described ‘‘naturalist,’’ est gains and values are farthest from being anonymously published ‘‘Nature,’’ a powerfully appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they lyrical essay that renounced both conventional exist. We soon forget them. They are the high- est reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and materialism and declared nature the and most real are never communicated by man source of endless human possibility and fulfill- to man. The true harvest of my daily life is ment. An excerpt from the first chapter hints at somewhat as intangible and indescribable as Emerson’s vision: the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I which I have clutched. see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of Like Thoreau, was supremely God. The name of the nearest friend sounds affected by the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to Unlike Thoreau, Melville did not become a devoted be acquaintances,—master or servant, is then a Transcendentalist, even though his short story ‘‘Bar- trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of tleby the Scrivener’’ (1853) exhibits similarities to uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wil- Emerson’s essay ‘‘.’’ ‘‘Bar- derness, I find something more dear and con- tleby’’ is Melville’s commentary on reason and com- nate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of monsense.Experimentalinstyle,theshortstory the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beauti- rates as one of Melville’s most important works and ful as his own nature. has been cited as a precursor to both Absurdist and Existential literature. Soon after the essay was published, Emerson became the voice for the Transcendental move- ment, a generation of American men and women Slave Narratives who sought to create a wholly new literature The proliferation of slave narratives published divorced from European influence. Their , throughout the mid- to late 1800s shed new light , and philosophical writings were defined on the human tragedy of . The best- by their reliance on intuition rather than ration- known authors of nineteenth century slave nar- ratives are Frederick Douglass, William Wells ality, individuality rather than . Many Brown, and . Jacobs’s Incidents Transcendentalists went on to become social in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), according to reformers, especially anti-slavery and women’s Linda M. Carter, ‘‘is an important work in that it advocates. is the most comprehensive slave narrative by a , a friend of Emerson’s woman.’’ Read in the context of the nineteenth- and a fellow Transcendentalist, was profoundly century American dream, these narratives paral- affected after reading ‘‘Nature.’’ As important as lel the emphasis on individualism and freedom ‘‘Nature’’was is in the canon of nineteenth century found in the literary works of free white (and American literature in American writers. Carter writes, general), Thoreau’s Walden (1854) is widely con- The nineteenth-century slave narratives contin- sidered the best representation of American ued the tradition of black self-definition and Transcendentalist thought. self-assertion that was established by the

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eighteenth-century slave narratives. The slave the century, frontiersmen and larger-than-life narratives of both centuries served as a preface folk heroes dominated the pages of popular and a foundation for subsequent expression books. Toward the end, beloved literary charac- through fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays, ters started to look more like everyday people and other genres. who possessed independence, individuality, and Jacobs’s story is told in rich, vivid detail, a willingness to make their own way in the world, giving the reader a firsthand account of the despite traditional cultural mores. daily humiliations and punishments meted out One of the most beloved of these characters by her cruel masters. In the preface to Incidents is Jo, ’s timeless creation who in the Life of a Slave Girl, written after her escape to the North, Jacobs writes, plays the leading role in her 1868 novel, . According to Elizabeth Janeway in her I have not written my experiences in order to 1968 New York Times book review, attract attention to myself; on the contrary, it would have been more pleasant to me to have Jo is a unique creation: the one young woman been silent about my own history. Neither do I in nineteenth-century fiction who maintains care to excite sympathy for my own sufferings. her independence, who gives up no But I do earnestly desire to arouse the women part of her as payment for being of the North to a realizing sense of the condi- born a woman—and who gets away with it. tion of two millions of women at the South, still Jo is the tomboy dream come true, the dream in bondage, suffering what I suffered, and most of growing up into full humanity with all its of them far worse. I want to add my testimony potentialities instead of into limited femininity: to that of abler pens to convince the people of of looking after oneself and paying one’s way the Free States what Slavery really is. Only by and doing effective work in the real world experience can any one realize how deep, and instead of learning how to please a man who dark, and foul is that pit of abominations. May will look after you, as Meg and Amy both do the blessing of God rest on this imperfect effort with pious pleasure. in behalf of my persecuted people! Another nineteenth-century literary favorite is Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain’s eternally beloved The Civil War ruffian from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Another woman who took great pains to docu- (1876). It is Tom’s vivid imagination and quick ment the events that shaped her life and reflected wit that define him as a loveable prankster, a the nation at large was Mary Boykin Chesnut. conformist who behaves like a rebel, an adven- Her Diary from Dixie (1905), published nearly turer who seeks the approval of the adults in his twenty years after her death, is a record of the life. Nineteenth-century readers of fiction, espe- events, issues, and people involved in the tragic cially young readers, had never met a character occurrences related to the Civil War. Chesnut, like Tom. Tom’s complexities coupled with wife of Senator James Chesnut, began a diary in Twain’s exposure of the inherent hypocrisy of February 1861 in which she recorded her institutions such as church and school signaled a thoughts about the war as it unfolded. What break in American literary traditions. The makes the Diary especially fascinating is American dream of individuality and self- Chesnut’s spirited personality, her wide literary interest was beginning to include a rejection of knowledge, her proximity to the events of the institutions and moral laws. war and the politicians who guided its course, and her anti-slavery stance supported by her The Implications of Rapid Change belief that southern women, such as herself, suf- The of Henry Adams (1871) is more fered enslavement by the male-dominated cul- than the autobiography of the great-grandson of ture of the region. Her outspokenness regarding American founding father , the female equality echoed a growing trend among grandson of U.S. President John Quincy women across the country; an all-out fight for Adams, and the son of U.S. Senator and women’s rights loomed on the horizon. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Charles Francis Adams. It is a critical review of the Unlikely American Heroes and Heroines political, social, intellectual, and technological As the nineteenth century waned, popular liter- changes this aristocratic American witnessed ary characters of the day revealed a shift in cul- over the course of his life. A fervent individualist tural heroes and heroines. At the beginning of and product of a life of observation, education,

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Walden Pond as seen from Henry David Thoreau’s hut ª Bettmann/Corbis

and writing, Adams was imminently qualified to Conclusion write what is essentially a critique of intellectual The American dream at the beginning of the and political life in the nineteenth century. 1800s was defined by rugged individualism of Written in the third person, The Education, those standing on the brink of a vast and wild though somewhat dark, is full of wit and frontier. As the land was tamed, so was the humor, as witnessed from this excerpt from the independent spirit that had come to characterize chapter titled ‘‘Failure’’: the American character; it was not lost, it simply Not that his ignorance troubled him! He knew turned inward. Independent thinking replaced enough to be ignorant. His course had led him land-grabbing and the Transcendental move- through oceans of ignorance; he had tumbled ment was born. This independent spirit was from one ocean into another till he had learned shared by slaves and expressed in slave narra- to swim; but even to him education was a seri- ous thing. A parent gives life, but as parent, tives that exposed the violence and fear experi- gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his enced by millions held in bondage so that the deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he horror of the institution might be seen for what it can never tell where his influence stops. truly was. The Civil War shattered the American Adams levels the bulk of his criticism at the dream for many, though those left standing were American educational model—thus the title of inspired to speak out against rampant inequal- his autobiography. He fully intends his life expe- ities between the races and the sexes. Finally, riences to be used as an educational tool to be individualism and the American dream reached used by those who have been failed by a cynical a crossroads; once excoriated the individ- nation overrun with materialism, civility, and ual for not conforming to a standard of behav- vulgar exploitation. ior. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was

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Anderson, Jill E., ‘‘Cooper, James Fenimore (1789– 1851),’’ in American Eras, Volume 5: The Reform Era and Eastern U.S. Development, 1815–1850, edited by Gerald J. Prokopwicz, Vol. 5. Gale Research, 1998. TOM WAS A GLITTERING HERO ONCE MORE— Carter, Linda M., ‘‘The Slave Narratives,’’ in African THE PET OF THE OLD, THE ENVY OF THE YOUNG. HIS American Almanac, edited by Jeffrey Lehman, 9th ed., NAME EVEN WENT INTO IMMORTAL PRINT, FOR THE Thomson Gale, 2003, Thomson Gale Trial Site (Decem- ber 9, 2006). VILLAGE PAPER MAGNIFIED HIM. THERE WERE SOME Emerson, Ralph Waldo, ‘‘Nature,’’ in Essays and English THAT BELIEVED HE WOULD BE PRESIDENT, YET, IF HE Traits, P. F. Collier & Son, 1909–1914; reprint, Bartleby. com, 2001, www.bartleby.com/5/114.html (December 26, ESCAPED HANGING.’’ 2006). Hutton, Paul Andrew, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in A Narrative of Source: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee, University of Nebraska Press, 1987, p. i. Jacobs, Harriet, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, xroads.virginia.edu/Hyper/JACOBS/hj-preface.htm (December 26, 2006), originally published in 1861. society that was faulted for failing to live up to Janeway, Elizabeth, ‘‘Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy and Louisa,’’ the standards of its citizens. in Book Review, September 29, 1968, pp. 42, 44, 46. Lewis, Meriwether, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, edited by Bernard DeVoto, Mariner Books, 1997, p. 203. SOURCES Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, xroads.virginia.edu/ HYPER/WALDEN/walden.html (December 26, 2006), Adams, Henry, ‘‘Chapter 20: Failure (1871),’’ The originally published in 1854. Education of Henry Adams, Houghton Mifflin, 1918; reprint, Bartleby.com, 1999, www.bartleby.com/159/ Twain, Mark, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, American 20.html (December 10, 2006). Publishing, 1876; reprint, Penguin Classics, 1986, p. 151.

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