University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 8-2019 Westward Empire: George Berkeley’s ‘Verses on the Prospect of Planting of Arts’ in American Art and Cultural History Elizabeth Kiszonas University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the American Art and Architecture Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Kiszonas, Elizabeth, "Westward Empire: George Berkeley’s ‘Verses on the Prospect of Planting of Arts’ in American Art and Cultural History" (2019). Theses and Dissertations. 3432. https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/3432 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Westward Empire: George Berkeley’s ‘Verses on the Prospect of Planting of Arts’ in American Art and Cultural History A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Elizabeth Kiszonas Rutgers University Bachelor of Arts in History, 2001 Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Master of Divinity, 2005 Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Master of Theology, 2011 August 2019 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ____________________________________ James Gigantino, Ph.D. Dissertation Director ____________________________________ ____________________________________ Leo Mazow, Ph.D. Daniel Sutherland, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member ____________________________________ Elliott West, Ph.D. Committee Member Abstract This study investigates the extraordinary half-life of a single line of poetry: “Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way…”. Beginning with their composition in 1726 by the Irish- Anglican bishop George Berkeley, these words colonized an enormous swath of cultural landscape over nearly two centuries. Immortalized in newsprint, broadsides, statesmen’s speeches, reading primers, geographies, the first scholarly history of the United States, as well as in poetry, paintings, lithographs, and photographs, the words evolved from an old-world vision of prophetic empire into a nationalist slogan of manifest destiny. Following the poem as it threads through literary and visual culture, this project demonstrates how a simple sentence acclimated Americans to an expansive conception of United States empire from the colonial period through Reconstruction. The persistent certainty about the westward progress of empire, indeed, about the inevitability of empire itself, demonstrates the enduring vitality of the colonists’ British cultural inheritance on the eve of the American Revolution. As equally important are the ways that Americans reshaped the ideology of the poem to fit their evolving sense of national self in the early republic and antebellum eras. Berkeley’s words offered a critical venue for nationalistic explorations in the early decades of the new republic, easing the transformation of the nation into a capitalist, acquisitive society; in the mid-nineteenth-century conflicts, they served to justify American bellicose imperialism in the Mexican-American War, while deeply informed the debates surrounding the coming of the Civil War and its immediate aftermath, as the nation wrestled over the contours of America’s future. For two centuries, this ideology has enabled Americans to be both convinced evangelists of the exceptional character of their democratic-republican form of government and, in the same breath, self-righteous defenders of their imperial prerogative, first over the north American continent and its indigenous inhabitants, and ultimately over a global colonial empire. “Westward Empire” reveals the ways that Berkeley’s poem shaped this unique ideology, as well as the ways that Americans adapted Berkeley’s poem to their unique circumstances, and the ways that this evolving and multi-layered interpretation in turn shaped American thought and behavior between 1752 and 1876. Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my family—to my parents Dennis and Barbara Kiszonas, to my sister Heather, and to my brother-in-law Sam—for their unwavering support, unflagging enthusiasm, and profound intellectual and soulful inspiration. Acknowledgements I would like to thank my committee members, Jim Gigantino, Leo Mazow, Dan Sutherland, and Elliott West for their help with this project. I have been fortunate to do my doctoral studies in an incredibly supportive and generous department. Special thanks to the curatorial and library staff of the Detroit Institute of Art, the New York Public Library, the New York State Library, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Library Company of Philadelphia for their kind assistance in providing research materials and for gamely fielding obscure queries. I am grateful to Dan Richter and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania for an intellectually rich fellowship year in 2018-2019; and to my fellow McNeil fellows, who provided a deeply collegial, thoughtful, and convivial community. Boundless thanks to fellow grad students Louise Hancox and Chelsea Hodge whose friendship made the journey not only survivable, but enjoyable. And to Laurent Sacharoff, who unfailingly offered a critical ear, a sharp eye, and a good measure of wit and wisdom. In completing this dissertation, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to two people. Leo Mazow has been an incomparable conversation partner over the last eight years. This project would quite literally have never materialized without his encouragement and brilliantly creative insight. I am a more confident thinker and writer and a more critical inquisitor of American culture because of his influence. His generosity as both a scholar and a friend has been invaluable to me. I have been equally fortunate in my advisor, Jim Gigantino. I cannot find the words to adequately express how grateful I am for the role he has played in my academic career. I am a better thinker, a better interlocutor, a better colleague, a better writer, a better historian for having had him as a mentor, both formally and informally. The poet Alexander Pope famously ascribed to his friend George Berkeley, “ev’ry virtue under heaven.” I have often thought the same could be said of Jim. Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………… . 1 Chapter 1 “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way”: The Translatio Theory in Western Civilization………………………………………………………………… 20 2 “The Seeds of Empire Are Sown in This New World”: Berkeley’s Verses in an Era of Revolution…………………………………………………………………………... 66 3 “Luxury Sat Like an Incubus”: Anxiety, Elation, and Thomas Cole’s Course of Empire in the Early American Republic……………………………………………………. 126 4 “A New Gospel to this Continent”: Emanuel Leutze’s Capitol Mural in a Time of War………………………………………………...................................................... 185 5 “Empire Takes Its Way”: The Transcontinental Railroad and the Colonization of the West in American Art………………………………………………………………. 219 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….. 271 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………... 278 Introduction In happy climes, the seat of innocence, Where nature guides and virtue rules, Where men shall not impose for truth and sense The pedantry of courts and schools… Not such as Europe breeds in her decay; Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay, By future poets shall be sung. Westward the Course of Empire takes its way, The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the Drama with the day, Time’s noblest offspring is the last. —from George Berkeley’s Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America (1726) “Sir,” began the letter in the Boston News-Letter on September 3, 1730, “As there hath been discovered in this our Town a very wonderful Phanomena, I have sent you an Account thereof for the perusal of your curious Readers.” The writer went on to relate an incident that had occurred while on a ramble through Plymouth, Massachusetts, the week before. Passing by a place “where they were about to dig a Cellar, we discovered a Stone, on which there seemed to be engraven certain letters, which when we had cleared from the Dirt, we read to our great Astonishment engraven very deep the ensuing Lines, ‘The Eastern World enslav’d, it’s Glory ends; And Empire rises where the Sun descends.” The stone’s condition suggested that it had been buried for many years. The writer refrained from sharing further details, as he intended, “so 1 soon as the Distemper is past,” to bring the stone to Boston to show it around “to the curious and the learned Gentlemen in that place.”1 The stone never materialized, although the story itself, or components of it, resurfaced from time to time over the course of the eighteenth century. The storied stone’s rhyming couplet found its way into the back of a colonial portraitist’s notebook, scribbled beneath other vaguely subversive sayings, dating no later than 1747.2 Some forty years later, the Royal American Magazine, a short-lived Boston periodical, resurrected the tale in a letter to the editor in the December 1774 issue. The correspondent wrote of a recent encounter with a “venerable old gentleman…who assured me, that about forty years past, a stone was dug out of a well in some part of the province.” Varying