Interactive Time Line

Milestone: Rise of American

Romanticism

Milestone: The Louisiana Purchase

Milestone: Education and Reform

Milestone: Transcendental Influence

Milestone: The Gold Rush

Milestone: The Slavery Issue

What Have You Learned?

Feature Menu

American Romanticism1800–1860

1803The Louisiana Purchase

Choose a link on the time line to go to a milestone.

18201800 1840 1860

1800Rise of American Romanticism

1830s–1850sTranscendental Influence

1849The Gold Rush

1850–1859The Slavery Issue

1826Lyceum Movement

American Romanticism1800–1860

• Characteristic Romantic journey to the countryside, away from city

Reaction Against Rationalism

• Value placed on nature and exotic settings

• Cities filled with poor living conditions and disease

Rise of American Romanticism

• Poetry highest expression of imagination

Romantic Escapism

• Found beauty in exotic locales and supernatural

• Valued feelings and intuition over reason

Rise of American Romanticism

Fireside Poets

• Wrote about American settings and subject matter using traditional styles and forms

Rise of American Romanticism

• Very popular—families read their poems at family firesides for entertainment

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

John Greenleaf Whittier

Oliver Wendell Holmes

James Russell Lowell

• James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo is the first American heroic figure

Romantic Heroes

• Typical Romantic hero youthful, innocent intuitive, close to nature

• Frontier life idealized in novels

Rise of American Romanticism

• immediately doubled in size

Westward Expansion

• paid about four cents an acre for the land

The United States

The Louisiana Purchase

• gained all land between Mississippi River and Rocky Mountains

Louisiana Purchase

―Oh Susanna! Polka‖

• More people moved into frontier areas.

Westward Expansion

• President Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore western territory.

• Louisiana purchase launched 100 years of westward expansion.

The Louisiana Purchase

• American movement founded in Massachusetts

The Lyceum Movement

• Sought to teach adults, train teachers, and institute social reforms

• Original Lyceum founded in Greece in 335 B.C.

Education and Reform

• Lyceums led to new ways of thinking and the establishment of museums and libraries.

The Lyceum Movement

• Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the most popular speakers.

• People went to lyceums for lectures.

Emerson lecturing in Concord, Massachusetts

Education and Reform

• Abolitionists worked to end slavery.

Other Reform Movements

• Horace Mann worked to improve public education.

• Dorothea Dix worked to help mentally ill people.

• Feminists campaigned for women’s rights

Education and Reform

Dorothea Dix Horace Mann

• Intuition allows people to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls.

True Reality Is Spiritual

• Physical facts of natural world are a doorway to spiritual world.

• Everything, including humans, is a reflection of Divine Soul.

• Spontaneous feelings are superior to intellectualism and rationality.

Transcendental Influence

• Optimism appealed to people living in period of economic downturn, strife, and conflict

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Had an extremely optimistic view of the world and nature

• Combined beliefs from Europe and Asia with Puritan, revival, and Romantic traditions

• Published important essays such as ―Self-Reliance‖ and ―The Over-Soul‖

Transcendental Influence

Dark Romantics

• Explored conflict between good and evil and the effects of guilt and sin

• Shared many beliefs with the Transcendentalists

Transcendental Influence

Edgar Allan PoeNathaniel Hawthorne Herman Melville

• New towns and cities were founded along routes to California and near mining sites.

The Rush West

• Tens of thousands traveled west, hoping for wealth.

• Gold was discovered in Sutter’s Mill, California.

The Gold Rush

• Led to building of the transcontinental railroad

New Frontiers

• Led to new settlements along the land route and west coast

• Journey to California long and dangerous

The Gold Rush

• opened territories to slavery

A Nation Divided

• Compromise was overturned by Kansas-Nebraska Act, which

• Missouri Compromise barred slavery west of Missouri.

The Slavery Issue

• led to violence in Kansas and to the founding of the antislavery Republican Party

• Dred Scott decision denied Congress right to prohibit slavery in territories.

A Nation Divided

• John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry led to more violence.

The Slavery Issue

Dred Scott

John BrownBurning of

Harper’s Ferry

______ Novelists popularize the American Romantic hero.

______ Western New York represents frontier of the country.

______ The first transcontinental railroad is built.

______ Education reform begins in Massachusetts.

Indicate whether the following statements refer to the time before, during, or after the Gold Rush.

after

before

during

before

What Have You Learned?

The End