# A History of American Literature/Chapter 13

XII.
THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD.
1837–1861
With the passing of the brilliant Knickerbocker group of writers the literary sceptre departed for a period from New York. Of the thirty-eight names selected by Poe, in 1846, as the "literati of New York," after throwing out Margaret Fuller, C. P. Cranch, Mrs. Child, and others who were only temporary residents of the city, scarcely one, aside from Halleck, Willis, Verplanck, and Duyckinck, can be found to-day outside of Griswold's collections, or the dictionaries of American biography.
Following the first creative period there came an interval of barrenness during which the future of American literature looked dark and uncertain. Holmes, with characteristic terseness, thus pictures the literary field as it appeared in 1832:
"Willis was by far the most prominent young American author. Cooper, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all done their best work. Longfellow was not yet conspicuous. Lowell was a schoolboy. Emerson was unheard of. Whittier was beginning to make his way against the writers with better educational advantages whom he was destined to outdo and outshine. Not one of the great histories, which have done honor to our literature, had appeared. Our schoolbooks depended, so far as American authors were concerned, on extracts from the orations and speeches of Webster and Everett; on Bryant's 'Thanatopsis, his lines 'To a ​Waterfowl,' and 'The Death of the Flowers'; on Halleck's 'Marco Bozzaris,' 'Red Jacket,' and 'Burns'; on Drake's 'American Flag,' and Percival's 'Coral Grove,' and his 'Genius Sleeping' and 'Genius Waking,'—and not getting very wide awake either. These could be depended upon. A few other copies of verses might be found, but Dwight's 'Columbia, Columbia,' and Pierpont's 'Airs of Palestine,' were already effaced, as many of the favorites of our day and generation must soon be, by the great wave which the near future will pour over the sands in which they still are legible."—Introduction to A Mortal Antipathy.
But the interregnum was not a long one. The years between 1831 and 1839 witnessed the publication of the first books of Whittier, Sparks, Bancroft, Holmes, Hawthorne, Emerson, Prescott, Hildreth, Motley, Longfellow, and Margaret Fuller. The advent of these authors marks the opening of the "Augustan Age" of American literature.
A Mental Revolution.—The line that separates the age of Irving from the age of Emerson is not the result alone of a geographical shifting of the centres of literary production. The transfer of the leadership from New York to New England was rather the result of a mental revolution which changed the whole character of New England and turned into new channels the current of its thought and literature.
The narrow ideals and the fierce intolerance of the Puritans could not long endure unmodified, since every creed that runs to excess must at length suffer from a reaction. The revolt against Puritanism in England, which had been precipitated by the coronation of Charles II. had been sudden and overwhelming. In a moment the pendulum had swung from one extreme to the other. ​In America the revolution was necessarily more gradual. Liberal ideas first became possible under the charter granted to Massachusetts by William III. The witchcraft delusion, with its revolting display of the worst side of Puritanism, opened the eyes of the more thoughtful and conservative. A disbelief in miracles and portents, in the doctrines of total depravity and eternal punishment, began to creep into the minds of many. The new spirit gained ground slowly but surely. Quakers, Baptists, and Catholics were allowed to build. churches. Liberal preachers began to fill the pulpits of Boston. Even Harvard University, once the stronghold of Puritanism, elected a president with liberal views, and soon afterward openly joined the new movement. During the early part of the present century the revolt against Puritanism went to nearly as violent an extreme in New England as formerly it had done under Charles II. in England. Later on the revolution drifted into intellectual and humanitarian channels.
In this movement three distinct ideas, corresponding to three distinct epochs, may be recognized. The first phase commenced in dissent from the principles of Puritanism, and reached its culmination in the Unitarianism of Channing; the second phase was known by the metaphysical designation of Transcendentalism; while in its last phase the movement spent its ebbing energies in the antislavery agitation preceding the Civil War.
1. Unitarianism.—The Unitarian movement in America commenced in the Congregational churches of Massachusetts, at first in a veiled form under the name ​of Arminianism, but in 1812 open revolt broke out, and soon the most influential churches of New England had embraced the new ideas. Showers of pamphlets and sermons, many of them of wonderful strength and excellence, were a striking characteristic of the controversy that followed. The discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity, which was at first prominent, soon gave way to numberless other important discussions. But the theological side of this great debate need not concern us. It is only in its after effects that it is of interest to the student of American literature.
2. Transcendentalism.—(See Frothingham's New England Transcendentalism. Also lives of Ripley and Parker, Emerson's Essays, Miss Alcott's Transcendental Wild Oats, and White's Philosophy of American Literature, 46–64.) The second phase of the new intellectual movement was the Transcendentalism of Ripley and Emerson, which was a departure from Unitarianism as Unitarianism had been a departure from Calvinism. It was in reality Unitarianism modified by the philosophy of Germany and France.
To understand this strange episode in our intellectual life one must be acquainted somewhat with the spirit of the age. Every student of European and of American history will recognize the fact that the first half of the Nineteenth Century was a "breaking-away period,"—a time of singular and universal restlessness. In Europe political revolutions were everywhere, except in Russia, overturning the old order of things. New ideas for the uplifting of society, of politics, of ethics, were in the ​air. In Germany, the school of Kant and Fichte was introducing a new philosophy; in France, Fourier and St. Simon were explaining a new science of society whose foundations were laid upon coöperation and a community of property. The Swedish philosopher, Swedenborg, had introduced a new religious system. The Swiss reformer, Pestalozzi, was inaugurating a new era in the history of education. In medicine the discussion of homœopathy, hydropathy, and many other systems was engaging the attention of the profession; while the new sciences, so called, of mesmerism and phrenology, as introduced by Gall and Spurzheim, were creating much excitement in some circles. Coleridge and Southey and Carlyle were arousing England with the new German philosophy.
In America the increased facilities for communication with Europe led to an acquaintance with Continental thought and literature. A new impetus was given to the study of the modern languages. In 1820 Edward Everett told in glowing rhetoric of the treasures that might be found in the literature and philosophy of Germany. Channing in 1823, and Bancroft and Hedge in 1825, made eloquent pleas for an increased attention to the literatures of Europe. Numberless translations soon appeared, some of them of high rank. As a result of this contact with Continental thought, New England became infected with the restlessness that had pervaded Europe, and a singular spirit of dissent and protest, of experiment and inquiry, crept into all departments of her intellectual life.
​"What a fertility of projects for the salvation of the world! One apostle thought all men should go to farming, and another that no man should buy or sell, that the use of money was the cardinal evil; another that the mischief is in our diet....Others attacked the system of agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming, and the tyranny of man over brute nature; these abuses polluted his food....Others assailed particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the institution of marriage as the fountain of social evils."—Emerson.
Required Reading.—Emerson's "New England Reformers."
Brook Farm.—(See Emerson's "Life and Letters in New England"; Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, and J. H. U. Studies, Vol. 6.) In the words of Frothingham, the historian of the movement, "it was felt at this time, 1842, that in order to live a religious and moral life in sincerity, it was necessary to leave the world of institutions and to reconstruct the social order from new beginnings." Accordingly, many of the reformers actually joined themselves into communities "where everything was common," as Lowell phrased it, "except common sense." In a short time there were as many as thirty of these organizations, each with its own peculiar regulations and ideals, but, as might have been expected, all died speedy and natural deaths.
The most famous of all these phalansteries was that at Brook Farm. This community, organized in 1842 by George Ripley as a stock company, purchased two hundred acres near West Roxbury, Massachusetts, eight miles from Boston. Among the best known of its members were Hawthorne, Charles A. Dana, and George William Curtis. Emerson and Margaret Fuller, who ​were in full sympathy with the movement, made frequent visits to the farm, while Theodore Parker, A. B. Alcott, W. H. Channing, and others gave it their hearty support. "To remodel society and the world into a 'happy family,'" says Holmes, "was the aim of these enthusiasts." Channing wrote that the object of the community was to found an association "in which the members should live together as brothers, seeking one another's elevation and spiritual growth." The daily life of the community consisted of coöperative farm work, reading, lecturing, writing, and conversation. This ideal life of "plain living and high thinking" continued until 1846, when the community building burned.
Although the Brook Farm Community ended in seeming failure, its influence on American thought and literature cannot be overlooked. It brought together for a period of several years the best thinkers of New England. At no other time in our history has there been such a dwelling together of intellectual leaders. When the community scattered, its members bore away the impress of the most powerful minds of the generation.
The Philosophical Basis of this movement, which has been widely discussed under the name of Transcendentalism, can be explained best by Emerson, who appeared to know the most about it.
"What is popularly called Transcendentalism among us is Idealism: Idealism as it appears in 1842. As thinkers, mankind have ever been divided into two sects,—Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; ​the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The Materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the Idealist on the power of thought and of will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture....The idealism of the present day acquired the name of transcendental from the use of that term by Immanuel Kant, who replied to the sceptical philosophy of Locke, which insisted that there was nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the experience of the senses, by showing that there was a very important class of ideas, or imperative forms, which did not come by experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself, and he denominated them transcendental forms."—The Transcendentalist.
1. The Dial.—Emerson was generally recognized as the leader of the movement, although Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and George Ripley were more active in disseminating its principles. The village of Concord, the home of Emerson, Thoreau, Ripley, and Alcott, became the transcendental centre. In 1840, The Dial first appeared, a paper that was to be the mouthpiece of the new philosophy, edited first by Margaret Fuller, afterwards by Emerson, who contributed upwards of forty articles in prose and verse. Thoreau wrote for nearly every number, while Theodore Parker, Alcott, Ripley, James Freeman Clarke, William Ellery Channing, William Henry Channing, C. P. Cranch, and many others were frequent contributors.
"It was conceived and carried out in a spirit of boundless hope and enthusiasm. Time and a narrowing subscription list proved too hard a trial, and its four volumes remain stranded, like some ​rare and curiously patterned shell which a storm of yesterday has left beyond the reach of the receding waves."—Holmes.
3. Antislavery.—The last phase of the movement towards intellectual and spiritual freedom was the abolition agitation, which, after a stormy career, was put to rest by the Civil War. It began in 1831, with Garrison's Liberator. The movement was
"at first religious and pious, addressing itself to the churches and clergy, and with such success that in 1835 there had been formed throughout the country not less than two thousand antislavery societies, whose members belonged mostly to the evangelical churches. But in that year the South became alarmed and angry and the politicians and commercial men set themselves to stem the tide of fanaticism, as they termed it. The cry of "The Union in danger' was raised, a fierce persecution was excited, the abolitionists were mobbed in all quarters, even in Boston itself, and the two thousand antislavery societies vanished like the phantoms of a dream. The churches and the clergy, with few exceptions, bent to the storm, and the leading divines of nearly all the great sects became apologists for slavery or silent on the subject. A small body of abolitionists, however, stood firm, and held to their principles in defiance of popular rage and outrage. Their struggle changed its character, and from a protest against black slavery it became a hand-to-hand contest for white liberty of speech and of the press."—Robert Carter.
The Transcendentalists, though generally opposed to slavery, were not all of them abolitionists. Many of them, indeed, were openly opposed to abolition. Yet the two movements started from the same fountain head. Garrison was the leader of the movement; Whittier was its poet, Sumner its representative in Congress, Mrs. Stowe its novelist, and Wendell Phillips its orator. The work of these brave leaders closed the period.