Chapter 13

Transcendentalism

A philosophy pioneered by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1830's and 1840's, in which each person has direct communication with God and Nature, and there is no need for organized churches. It incorporated the ideas that mind goes beyond matter, intuition is valuable, that each soul is part of the Great Spirit, and each person is part of a reality where only the invisible is truly real. Promoted individualism, self-reliance, and freedom from social constraints, and emphasized emotions.

Middle Class

A social class made up of skilled workers, professionals, business people, and wealthy farmers

Henry David Thoreau

American transcendentalist who was against a government that supported slavery. He wrote down his beliefs in Walden. He started the movement of civil-disobedience when he refused to pay the toll-tax to support him Mexican War.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American transcendentalist who was against slavery and stressed self-reliance, optimism, self-improvement, self-confidence, and freedom. He was a prime example of a transcendentalist and helped further the movement.

Emily Dickomson

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Know nothing party

Group of prejudice people who formed a political party during the time when the KKK grew. Anti-Catholics and anti-foreign. They were also known as the American Party.

Walt Whitman

I Hear America Singing

Utopian Communities

Idealistic and impractical communities. Who, Rather than seeking to create an ideal government or reform the world, withdrew from the sinful, corrupt world to work their miracles in microcosm, hoping to imitate the elect state of affairs that existed among the Apostles. ex) brook farm, oneida, new harmony

Tenements

Poorly built, overcrowded housing where many immigrants lived

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Psalm of Life

Margaret Fuller

Social reformer, leader in women's movement and a transcendentalist. Edited "The Dial" which was the publication of the transcendentalists. It appealed to people who wanted "perfect freedom" "progress in philosophy and theology and hope that the future will not always be as the past".

Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter

Nativist

a person who favors those born in his country and is opposed to immigrants