The Role of Philosophy and Literature in building up the National Identity of the early 19th century United States
Introduction
The Quest for Nationalism
The Intellectual Climate
Two Philosophies
History & Literature
Conclusion
Works consulted
Introduction
The Declaration of Independence of the United States in 1776 did not mean a sudden hiatus in social and cultural development. The trend toward a distinctive American way of life had begun during the Colonial period. Nevertheless, the creation of an independent body politic was such a concrete event that it provoked an additional stimulus to the quest for a distinctive identity. It is no wonder then that the American historians have paid a lot of attention to the decades following the American Revolution. Many historians regard the early 19th century as the most important and crucial period in the cultural history of the United States, on the grounds that this era represented for the U.S. the opportunity to shape its political, economic, cultural and social future free from external pressure. Henry F. May, for instance, argues that if a distinct American culture can be said to exist, then it was during this period that it took shape.
The point of departure in these kinds of interpretations has continuously been the problem of national identity. Was the United States a nation or only a loose coalition of various people and landscapes? Which were the factors that shaped American nationalism and American mentality? Or, which were the factors aiming at sectionalism? I give you only two examples, which are somewhat opposite to each other.
First, Russel Blaine Nye has identified four factors in the post-independence decades which provided the basis for the evaluation of a distinctive American culture. In the 1960s and 1970s he published two influential books on early American culture and society where his ideas can be detected and which have been very useful also for this paper.
The first two factors in Nye's "system" operate in the temporal dimension. First of all, the leaders of the American republic were aware of their past: of the fact that the United States was a product of a long process of development, English in the first instance, but also, on a more general plane, European. Thomas Jefferson saw Europe as a teacher, from whose past (both in its good and bad aspects) Americans could learn to understand their own past. History was not seen as a burden, but as an aid to the new history, that is to the future.
The emergence of an original Americanism can be understood more clearly in terms of Nye's second factor, the attitude toward the future. The Americans' positive view of the future rested on the assumption that their society, and its members, were superior to the rest of the world. This thinking was based on the values of the new industrializing, embourgeoising, secularizing society in which activities were directed towards a constant improvement of the standard of living. In certain areas, however, such as intellectual culture, a temporary state of inferiority was recognized, but this was assumed to be bound to disappear in the course of time. Their superiority was seen by the Americans themselves as deriving from the dynamism of their society, which unlike the European nations had never had to endure feudalism and were free from the class boundaries. Moreover, it was believed that this way of life ought to be spread to other nations. Thus the American authorities adopted a sense of mission during the very first decades of their history as an independent nation.
The next two factors in Nye's approach operate in space: in horizontal (and geographical) terms the relationship to Europe was crucial. Naturally, the value judgment depended on the measuring rod chosen. For the majority (or, the average American) view the most common criteria included democracy, individual freedom, or moral questions, while the cultural minority emphasized intellectual achievements which could not match the long European tradition.
The fourth factor was powerfully trans-atlantic as well, but in more concrete terms. Heavy emigration in the post-Napoleonic period from Europe made America a multi-ethnic nation and contributed strongly to the nature of American nationalism. Connected to this, the frontier of settlement which was steadily moving further west was also a crucial explanatory factor both in the Americans' life and their Americanism.
Nye's analysis ends in a summary. He concludes that these four features led to a unique combination of unity and pluralism in American society: everyone was in theory equal, yet the individual, and individual freedom, also provided a counterweight to the majority. Not only the individual, but equally the group, was of importance. Both for culture and other forms of human activity, these were factors which provided the tone of the American intellectual atmosphere, and a tension between majority and minority aspirations on the direction of the American national identity.
Robert M. Crunden published his American cultural history in 1990 and looks at American history differently from Russel Blaine Nye. Crunden does not place himself in the situation of the early 19th century Americans, but makes his conclusions retrospectively. According to him, the American history can be understood from the point of view of religion, capitalism and democracy. Thus for Crunden, spirit, economy and political and social equality explain the American history in its entirety . Crunden concludes that before 1815 Americans perceived their mentality locally, in several separate centers on the Eastern seaboard. The second phase lasted until 1901 and was a time of regionalism and sectionalism (North, South, West). Nationalism was the most important ideology only during the first four decades of the 20th century, after which the Americans have belonged to the cosmopolitan, global world, Crunden writes.
As these examples indicate, historians cannot agree when nationalism in America began or what it was like. Even more difficult it was for the contemporaries. The Declaration of Independence, if it did not create a nation, made it clear that although there were thirteen colonies, they were united. "Our great title is American", wrote Thomas Paine. Nor could the problems of independence and war be confronted and solved except in nationalistic terms. The Constitution of 1787 or the War of 1812 between the U.S. and England further strengthened this feeling.
By the Jacksonian era of the 1830s, the Fourth of July was the most important national holiday. Authorities in Washington were eager to develop national symbols, to encourage the nationalistic pride and confidence in a country which undoubtedly had severe sectional problems by the middle of the century: i.e. negro slavery in the South, steady movement to the West, and problems of urbanization and industrialization in the North.
In search for these symbols, it is interesting to notify, that the nation turned, not to England which it had rejected, but to Greece and Rome (particularly to Rome, "the most powerful republic in history"). Thus the Eagle furnished an equivalent for the British Lion, while the Great Seal of the United States, adopted in 1776, with its slogan of "E Pluribus Unum" was directly derived from similar Roman apparatus. Roman architecture furnished patterns for American public buildings. The upper house of the Congress became a Senate. Even Horatio Greenough's statue of George Washington, done in 1841, clothed him in a Roman toga.
The Quest for Nationalism
The official United States was very well aware of its identity, and it was fortified with an egocentric sense of mission and an idea of progress without limits. Schoolbooks taught that the U.S. is an example for 90% of the human race - for all those who have not inherited their position or wealth. Alexis de Tocqueville who visited the United States in the 1830s wrote that the frontier men in the backwoods of Michigan possessed the same kind of ideas and attitudes as the government officials in the East. According to him, "America, more than France, was one society". The sectional tension was turning to its climax only after Tocqueville's visit.
It should be noted also that the idea of nation or union was not the same in the mind of an average American - whether a lumberjack in Michigan, a farmer in Kansas, a ranch hand in Texas or a street cleaner in New York - as in the mentality and actions of a Washington congress member or a New England intellectual. For many, America was a land of opportunity, a channel to a materially better life; one's immediate, individual needs and aspirations went well beyond the theoretical or even moral speculations about the nature of the new nation.
The Intellectual Climate
It remained for the East Coast intellectuals to mediate between Washington authorities and other Americans on questions of the national identity. Although the national symbols were partly borrowed from Greece and Rome, philosophers and authors could not avoid contemporary European intellectual impulses in building up the foundations of their intellectualism.
Even though the Americans had fought against the Englishmen in the 1770s and again in 1812-1814, the British Isles was the closest link to European culture. Americans recognized their inferiority in intellectual culture; they knew that they had to be educated to western culture the European way. Their democratic system was good and useful for the modern kind of life but it was not enough; colleges and universities were founded to train churchmen and civil servants, but also to raise the cultural consciousness of the population.
The ideals of Enlightenment and Romanticism dominated the American intellectual life in the late 18th and early 19th century. Ideas of the Age of Reason came late to America. Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and others were inspired by texts which were 50-100 yeard old; they cited Locke, Newton and Voltaire, while their contemporaries in Europe read Coleridge, Schiller and Goethe. The founders of the American republic leant on thinkers who seemed to answer to their immediate needs and purposes. They were very practical and nationalistic in their rationalism while European philosophy, literature and science were more international and conceptual. The ideas of Enlightenment were submitted to the ideals of American democracy and progress, and the development of religion.
The same is true with the Romantic movement as well, but its ideals fitted chronologically well with the first decades of the American experiment. Therefore, it was more influential in forging the intellectual and artistic climate than Enlightenment. In Europe, the centers of Romanticism could be found in German-speaking areas and in England, and this helped its influence in America. Factors like breaking off old traditions (especially Classicism), the revolutionary nature of culture, Christian religion, individualism and political radicalism could be easily transferred to serve the American society. Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasized individual freedom many times in many ways. "I have taught one doctrine, namely the infinitude of the private man", he summarized in his book Self-Reliance.
This work was published in 1836, and according to Robert M. Crunden, it was only then when Romanticism made its aesthetic breakthrough in the United States. It was a fairly late phenomenon in America but relatively speaking not as late as Enlightenment. It is worth pointing out, too, that many of the social ideals of Romanticism were well known in America, among the youth in particular, already in the 1820s: Crunden writes how the young generation criticized the bourgeois character, Englishness and Classicism of their parents.
Two Philosophies
On the other hand, these Romantic ideals lived longer in America than in Europe. American Romanticism was more conservative; it did not question the basic structures of the American government, institutions or way of life. American Romanticism produced Longfellow, not Byron, and it produced Thoreau, not Marx. Not even the American youth accepted Schiller's revolutionary spirit, or Byron's opposition towards institutions, or Goethe's conception of morals.
The very title of Emerson's other book The Nature (1836) reveals much: American intellectuals of the early 19th century paid a lot of attention to the relation between man and nature. This was natural: America was large, America possessed many landscapes and virgin lands. This was the essential feature in American Romanticism; in a way, Romanticism was in the mentality of the Americans even before its ideals came from Europe. Therefore, it was a driving force there for a long time, especially in the arts.
In the American philosophy the Age of Reason and the idealism of Romanticism were equally influential during the early 19th century. The practical and rational nature of the American society was clearly reflected in philosophy even though other areas of the humanities were more Romantic. It also should be noted that since the Americans were more men and women of action than speculative thinkers, philosophy was by no means the central factor in American culture. Tocqueville wrote in the 1830s that he did not know any people who were so uninterested in philosophy than the Americans. Even though he exaggarated, it was easy see that the Germans, English and French avoided the practical aspects of philosophy compared to American thinkers who looked for useful solutions and mixed political and theological ingredients with their philosophy.
The so called Scottish approach became the quasi-official philosophy of nineteenth-century America. Few educated Americans, in the generations between 1790 and 1870, were not familiar with concepts of the Scottish school. John Witherspoon, who left Scotland to become president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) in 1768, brought it to America. During the Revolutionary era the major strain of American philosophy had been Lockean empiricism, which had fitted admirably with the political and scientific interests of the times. As Locke's popularity faded in America and England, Americans found a satisfactory replacement in the philosophy of "common sense" in building up their democratic ideals. The Scottish approach was an answer to those needs.
It provided a means by which men could establish workable standards of religious, aesthetic, and moral truth. It gave, as one of its proponents, Thomas Reid, claimed, "to the human mind the power to make original and natural judgments which serve to direct us in the common affairs of life, when our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark". These judgments, he continued, "make up what is called the common sense of mankind", providing men with best possible moral and social codes.