As the young republic grew, reform campaigns of all types flourished to do battle against earthly evils.
- Dorthea Dix advocated that prisons should reform as well as punish and that asylums for the mentally ill should improve their conditions.
-1826: American Temperance Society was formed.
-1851: Neal Dow sponsored the Maine Law which prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor.
- Women began advocating equality:
-Elizabeth Cady Stanton advocated women's suffrage.
-Susan B. Anthony became a militant lecturer (Suzy B's)
-Lucy Stone kept her maiden name (Lucy Stoners)
-Amelia Bloomer wore Turkish trousers. (Bloomers)
-1848: Seneca Falls Convention
-Utopian experiments: Oneida Colony in New York was the most successful.
Scientific advances:
-Louis Agassiz (Harvard biologist) insisted on original research.
-John J. Audubon painted wild fowl in their natural habitat (Birds of America) - pg. 339
Artistic achievements:
-Gilbert Stuart: Portraits (George Washington)
-Hudson River School: Landscapes.
National literature:
-Washington Irving: The Sketchbook (Rip Van Winkle)
-James Fenimore Cooper: Last of the Mohicans & Leatherstocking Tales
Transcendentalists: "All knowledge came through an inner light "
-Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The American Scholar"
-Henry David Thoreau: Walden & Civil Disobedience
-Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass > " Poet Laureate of Democracy"
Other Literary Giants:
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Hiawatha"
- William Gilmore Simms: Southern novelist.
Literary Dissenters:
-Edgar Allen Poe "The Raven"
-Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter
-Herman Melville: Moby Dick
Historians:
-George Bancroft: "Father of American History"
* Most distinguished historians were from New England