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American Culture

Terms in this set (38)

Puritan Literature
Emphasized education and importance of reading God's word. Wanted to make god more relevant. Stressed self-reflection, self-regulation, and spiritual contemplation. Johnathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" Roger Williams, Anne Bradstreet
Literature of Settlement
Journals, diaries, letters and logs of first settlers (Christopher Columbus) Settlers wrote home and described the landscape - Travel Pamphlets
John Smith
A soldier of fortune with rare powers of leadership and self-promotion. He was appointed to the resident council to manage the Jamestown colony. He imposed strict discipline and force all to work. He imprisoned, whipped and forced colonists into labor. He bargained with the Powhatan Natives and explored and mapped the Chesapeake region.
Cotton Mather
Puritan minister who authored nearly 500 works and is remembered as the moral center for Puritan New England
Anne Bradstreet
Puritan; wrote "In Reference to her Children;" English-American writer, first notable American poet; first woman to be published in Colonial America
Edward Taylor
Puritan; poet. talks about sewing, asks the Lord to guide him in making a cloth of grace that he can wear
Jonathan Edwards
A Congregationalist preacher of the Great Awakening who spoke of the fiery depths of hell.
Thomas Paine
American Revolutionary leader and pamphleteer (born in England) who supported the American colonist's fight for independence and supported the French Revolution (1737-1809)
Benjamin Franklin
American writer, publisher, scientist, inventor, and diplomat. Wrote Poor Richard's Almanac and The Autobiography
Alexis de Tocqueville
French political writer noted for his analysis of American institutions (1805-1859) "Democracy in America"
Abigail Adams
"Remember the Ladies"
Thomas Jefferson
Declaration of Independence - Inspired by Locke
Argued that natural law would govern (people are born with rights and freedoms)
Government protects those freedoms
Library of Congress
Built in 1800
Destroyed during War of 1812
Jefferson sold 6,487 books in 1815
Transcendentalism
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. Promoted individualism, self-reliance, and freedom from social constraints, and emphasized emotions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
American essayist, philosopher, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement. Wrote "self reliance" and "Nature"
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.
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".
Goodrich and Abbott
popular antebellum children's authors
Louisa May Alcott
American writer and reformer best known for her largely autobiographical novel Little Women (1868-1869).
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Wrote "Little House" books about her life on the prairie
Noah Webster
American writer who wrote textbooks to help the advancement of education. He also wrote a dictionary which helped standardize the American language.
McGuffey Readers
A series of elementary textbooks embedded with the virtues of hard work, punctuality, and sobriety.
Edgar Allen Poe
a gifted lyric poet, short story writer, who was fascinated by the ghastly and ghostly themes in his poems, he is most famous for "The Raven"
Washington Irving
American writer remembered for the stories "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," contained in The Sketch Book (1819-1820).
James Fenimore Cooper
American novelist who is best remembered for his novels of frontier life, such as The Last of the Mohicans (1826).
Nathaniel Hawthorne
19th century author known for his novels and short stories that explore themes of sin and guilt. His works include The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
American poet that was influenced somewhat by the transcendentalism occurring at the time. He was important in building the status of American literature. "Paul Revere's Ride"
Herman Melville
American writer whose experiences at sea provided the factual basis of Moby-Dick (1851), considered among the greatest American novels
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book about a slave who is treated badly, in 1852. The book persuaded more people, particularly Northerners, to become anti-slavery.
Walt Whitman
American poet and transcendentalist who was famous for his beliefs on nature, as demonstrated in his book, Leaves of Grass. "O Captain, My Captain"
Phyllis Wheatley
First African American to have poetry published. Slave in the American Colonies.
Frederick Douglass
one of the most prominent african american figures in the abolitionist movement. escaped from slavery in maryland. he was a great thinker and speaker. published his own antislavery newspaper called the north star and wrote an autobiography that was published in 1845.
Sojourner Truth
American abolitionist and feminist. Born into slavery, she escaped in 1827 and became a leading preacher against slavery and for the rights of women. "Ain't I a Woman?"
Susan B. Anthony
social reformer who campaigned for womens rights, the temperance, and was an abolitionist, helped form the National Woman Suffrage Assosiation
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
American feminist and social reformer. She helped organize the first women's rights convention, held in Seneca Falls, New York (1848), for which she wrote a Declaration of Sentiments calling for the reform of discriminatory practices that perpetuated sexual inequality
Lucretia Mott
Quaker activist in both the abolitionist and women's movements; with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she was a principal organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848.
James Audubon
painted birds landscape, published "bird book"
Hudson River School
Founded by Thomas Cole, first native school of landscape painting in the U.S.; attracted artists rebelling against the neoclassical tradition, painted many scenes of New York.
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