human affairs with miracles and revelations. Optimism, deism and enlightenment argued that man was naturally good and his natural emotions were divine. During his life, he worked to establish religious freedom and to end slavery and to assert the idea of men s inalienable (inherent) rights. He was an outspoken abolitionist, but owned many slaves during his lifetime. All men are created equal; they have unalienable rights to freedom, liberty and pursuit of happiness. He said that all men are equal but as he did not call natives or Negros as humans, they did not have these rights.BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was credited as being the founder of the American values of character, self-reliance, hard work, education, community and spirit. He exemplifies the American dream of the poor boy who makes good. He helped to create the American Republic, and believed that God helps those who help themselves. He believed in the possibilities of human progress and comforts of material success. He also talks about the politeness of the 'savages'.JAMES COOPER was the first American novelist and his most famous work is the last of the Mohicans. Romanticized the image of the wise and noble red man. His literature would praise the land. PURITANS CHOSEN ONES, PREDESTINATION, SUPERIORITY, MANIFEST DESTINY.19o CENTURY LITERATURE ROMATISCISM. There were 2 trends, 1 represented by the transcendentalists EMERSON and THOUREAU who believed that men should transcend the material and think in the spiritual reality; Transcendentalists argued that knowledge did not come exclusively through the intellect, but also through the senses, intuition, and sudden insight. a self that is independent, do not depend on government, and the 2 represented by POE, HAWTHORNE and MELVILLE who believed that men are fragile, corrupt, powerless, they talk about the limitations of men.EMERSON believed that slavery was fundamental, was against the democratization of the US, was individualist and materialist. He was also Calvinist and gave emphasis to the individual, who can know the truth, the spiritual and the divine light immediately imparted to the soul. He was very important for the concept that American have about themselves as god-like creatures. He also believed that we talk to God without intermediaries (Calvinists). Men are as powerful as God, can do anything. He is very contradictory and naive. Slaves were not human for him. Self-imperial His works emphasized spontaneous and vivid expression of emotion rather than logic and analysis. In his essays Nature and Self-Reliance, claimed that all people were capable of seeing the truth if they relied on their inner selves and trusted their hearts. He said that intuition was a guide of universal truth, and was against the predestination. Self-Reliance contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's repeating themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency (make us not trust ourselves), and follow his or her own instincts and ideas, Men needed to trust themselves. Values the mind of the individual. In the State men do not posses himself, has conformity. The American scholar The scholar's education consists of three pursuits: 1. Nature to investigate, study and to