Literature to 1700

T H E M A R V E L S O F S P A I N — A N D A M E R I C A

In 1494 a man who had cro s sed the At lant ic in a large ship re turned home to amaze tho se whom he had left behind with ta les of a new world full of "mar-vels . " None of those who l istened to him had accomp l i shed anything remotely like this. None had heard of this other wor ld , let a lone seen it, and none cou ld beg in to comp rehend what its discovery m ight mean for their own fami l iar uni-verse . As they l istened with rapt a t ten t ion , the voyager told of things undrea-med of, p lan ts and anima ls and mos t of all s trange peop l e s who se uncanny cu s tom s , co s tume s , and beliefs a s toni shed all who heard him .

The man in que s t ion m ight have been Ch r i s tophe r Co lumbu s or any of the dozens of Eu ropean s who accompanied him on his first voyage , bu t he was not . In fact , this teller of tales did join in that voyage , but he had not sa i led from Pa lo s , Spa in , with the other men on Augu s t 6, 1 4 9 2 , and had not been with them when , at two in the morning of Oc tobe r 12, they s igh ted the B aham ian is land they named S an Sa lvador . Twice he c ro s sed the At lant ic with Co lumbu s , but in reverse : first to Spa in from the Ind ies and then back aga in . We do not know his original name , but we know that he was a T a ino Ind ian from the B ah am a s , one of seven nat ives whom C o lumbu s seized and took to Spa in . The re he was bapt ized and renamed Diego Co lon , after the son of Co lumbu s himself . (Colon was the Spani sh vers ion of the family 's name . ) O f the o ther nat ives , all of whom were similarly rechr is tened , one rema ined in Spa in , where he d ied within a few years . Fou r o thers d ied of s ickness on the pa s s a ge back to Amer ica with Co lumbu s and Co lon . Co lon and the sixth man e scaped the s ame fate only "by a hair 's bread th , " as the fleet 's phys ic ian , Diego Alvarez Ch anc a , wrote in his impor tan t letter on the second voyage . Re turned to the Ca r ibbean , the two served a s trans la tors for the much larger party of Spania rd s , pe rhap s fifteen hundred strong, who arrived in seven teen ships early in Novembe r 1493 . Co lon himsel f a lready had seen service a s an intermed iary dur ing the first voyage .

O f the two men , only Colon is reported by the histor ian Andre s Berna ldez , who knew Co lumbu s and u sed the mar iner 's own lost accoun t of the second voyage , to have rega led the other nat ives with tales of " the things which he had seen in Cas t i le and the marvels of Spa in , . . . the great cit ies and for-tresses and chu rche s , . . . the peop l e and horses and anima l s , . . . the great nobility and wea lth of the sovereigns and great lords , . . . the k inds of food , . . . the festivals and tournamen t s [and] bu l l-f ight ing." Perhap s the other man had died by this point in the second voyage . Perhap s Co lumbu s s ing led out Colon for specia l men t ion becau se Colon had learned Cas t i l ian well enough to speak it and had shown himsel f to be an intelligent man and a good gu ide . He was to accompany Co lumbu s on the whole of this voyage , which lasted three years .

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The story of Colon ca tche s in m in ia ture the extraordinary change s that were to occu r a s natives of the O ld Wor ld encoun te red nat ives of the New for the first t ime in recorded history . H is story rem inds us first that discovery was mu tua l rather than one s ided . To be su re , far more Eu ropean s voyaged to Amer ica than Ame r i can s to Eu rope , and they sen t home thou sand s of reports and letters deta i l ing what they saw and did in the New Wor ld . Bec au se many of these Eu ropean travelers c am e to Amer i ca to stay , however , the Ind ians soon had a colonia l im itat ion of Eu rope develop ing be fore their eyes , comp le te with for tresses , chu rche s , hor se s , new foods (on the second voyage , Co lumbu s brought whea t , me lon s , onion s , rad ishes , sa lad green s , grapevines , sugar cane , and var ious fruit trees ) , and much else that Colon in 1493 cou ld have found only in Eu rope . Over t ime the nat ives of Amer ica cou ld d iscover Eu rope enc roaching on their villages and fields as the impor ted Eu ropean land scape vied with their own . Eu rope was presen t in the textiles on the colonis ts ' bod ies , in the tools in their hand s (for bo th of which the Amer i can Ind ians traded ) , and in the inst itut ions of the church and state (slavery being the mo s t obvious examp le ) that had begun to re shape the ident it ies and reorganize the lives of Nat ive Amer i can peop l e s . In such concre te terms a new world was being crea ted in the We s t Ind ies . It was not the new world Co lumbu s himsel f was speak ing of near the end of his life when he wrote in 1 5 0 0 to the Spani sh sovereigns Ferd inand and Isabella that he had "brough t under [their] dom in ion . . . ano ther wor ld , whereby Spa in , which was ca l led poor , is now mo s t r ich . " The new wor ld that mat-tered was not ju s t an expan se of space previous ly unknown to Eu ropean s ; it was a genu inely new set of socia l rela t ionships that wou ld evolve over the next cen tur ies as Eu rope and the Amer i cas con t inued to interact . With the Eu ropean in troduc t ion of Afr ican s laves early in the s ixteenth century , the terms of this new world became much more comp lex. The cu l tura l and socia l relat ions of Ame r i can s took their origin in a great mix ing of peop l e s from the whole At lant ic bas in dur ing the first cen tury and a half after 1 4 9 2 .

Discovery began with wonde r— tha t of Colon ' s l isteners on his return in 1494 and that of Co lumbu s as he de scan ted on the green beau ty of the i s lands—evok ing a mood that has rema ined s trong in Amer i can writing ever s ince : he saw " trees of a thou s and k ind s " on S an Sa lvador in Novembe r 1 4 9 2 , trees that seemed to " touch the sky . . . as green and a s lovely a s they are in Spa in in May . " Bu t beyond that t ran scenden t momen t , discovery enta i led a many-s ided proce s s of in f luence and exchange that u lt imately produced the hybrid cu ltura l universe of the At lant ic wor ld , of which the Eng l i sh colonies were one sma l l part . Mu ch of this universe c am e through s trugg le rather than coopera t ion . E ach peop l e u sed its own trad it ions or e lemen t s recent ly borrowed from o thers to endu re or conque r or outwit its oppos i te numbe r s , and violence often swa l lowed up the pr ima l wonder g l imp sed in the earl iest documen t s . With gunpowder and steel , Eu ropean s had the technolog ica l edge in war fare , and it wou ld seem tha t—de sp i te cen tur ie s of p ropa g anda to the con trary— they took violence more ser ious ly than did the Amer i can Ind ians . The natives at first found the sca le of Eu ropean warfare appa l l ing. In New Eng land , the colonis ts ' nat ive allies aga ins t the Pequo t tribe in 1637 comp la ined that the Eng l ish manne r of fighting, as sold ier John Underhill noted in his Newes from America ( 1 6 3 8 ) , " [was] too fur ious , and s lay[ed] too many men . " The nat ives were qu i ck to adop t Eu ropean weapon s and tac t ics ,

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however , app lying them to their own d i spu te s and to their d ispu tes with the Eu ropean s . The ferocity of what Eu ropean s have ca l led the " Ind ian wa r s " was the violent recoil in the face of violence from inter lopers who threa tened the very life of the nat ive peop le s .

A lmos t literally from 1 4 9 2 , native peop le s began to die in large numbe r s , if not from war then from en s lavemen t , bruta l m i s trea tmen t , despa ir , or d i sease . One of the more ins id ious forms of "exchange " involved the transfer to the Amer i can Ind ians of the m i crobe s to which Eu ropean s had become inured but to which the Ind ians had virtually no re s i s tance . No thing better disp lays the isolat ion of the con t inen t s and the drama of encoun te r that began in 1492 than the ep idem ic d isas ters that sma l lpox, meas l e s , typhus , and other O ld Wor ld ma lad i e s unleashed on the Nat ive Ame r i can s . Whole popu la t ion s p lumme ted as such d i sease s , comb ined with the other severe s tresses p laced on the nat ives , spread throughou t the C a r ibbean and then on the ma inland of Cen tra l and Sou th Amer i ca . The inst itut iona l d i sease of slavery further dec ima ted the native peop le s . It is widely agreed that the original popu la t ion of the is land of H i spaniola (es t ima ted at anywhere from one hundred thou sand to eight million in 1492) p lunged once the Spani sh took over the is land , partly through d i sease and partly through the abu se s of the encomienda system of virtual en s lavemen t . In the face of this sudden decl ine in ava i lable native labor , Spa in in troduced Afr ican slavery into H is-paniola as early as 1 5 0 1 . By the m idd le of the s ixteenth cen tury the nat ive popu la t ion had been so comp le tely d i sp laced by Afr ican s laves that the Span-ish histor ian An tonio de Herrera ca l led the is land "an effigy or an image of E thiop ia itself." Thu s the des truc t ion of one peop le was accompan ied by the d i sp lacemen t and en s lavemen t of ano ther . By that point , the na ive "wonder " of discovery was all but unrecoverab le .

It wou ld be inaccura te to p ic ture the Ind ians , however , a s merely vict ims , suffer ing decl ine . The nat ives made shrewd u se of the Eu ropean p re sence in Amer ica to forward their own a im s , as Colon rem inds u s . In 1519 the d isaffected natives in the Aztec Emp i re clearly threw their lot in with Co r te s becau se they saw in him a chance to sett le the score with their overlord Mon tezuma , which they assured ly did . In New Eng land , the Pequo t Wa r of 1637 saw a s imi lar a l ignmen t on the Eng l ish s ide of tribes such a s the Nar-raganse t ts and the Moheg an s , who had gr ievances with the fierce Pequo t s , inter lopers in the reg ion . Unde r ordinary c i rcum s tance s , as among the Iro-quois in the Nor theas t , Eu ropean technology and the Eu ropean market were seized on a s a mean s of consol ida t ing advan tage s ga ined before the arrival of the colonists . The Iroquois had begun to organize their f amou s Le a gue of the Five Na t ions before Eu ropean se t t lemen t , but they solidified their ear l ier victories over other native peop les by forg ing canny a l l iances with the Du tch and then the Eng l ish in New York. In the Sou theas t , remnan t peop le s banded together in the early eighteenth cen tury to crea te the C a tawba , a new polit-ical group that con s truc ted what one historian has ca l led a "new wor ld" for itself. No longer known by a bewilder ing diversity of name s , the former Na s -saw and Sutt ir ie and Cha r ra and Su c c a peop les banded together with several others in an a t temp t to deal more effectively with the enc roach ing Euro-Amer i can s of Char l e s ton and the Low Coun try . This hardly was a ca se of d im in i shmen t or reduc t ion . Even a s fewer and fewer of the original mi l l ions rema ined , they showed themselves resource fu l in res ist ing, trans form ing,

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and exp loit ing the exot ic cu l tures the Eu ropean s were impo s ing on their original land scape .

N A T IV E A M E R I C A N O R A L L I T E R A T U R E

When Co lumbu s sa i led from Eu rope in 1 4 9 2 , he left behind him a numbe r of relatively centra l ized na t ion-s ta tes with largely agr icu l tura l econom i e s . Eu ropean s spoke some two or three dozen language s , mo s t of them closely related ; and they were genera l ly Chr i s t ian in relig ious belief and worldview , a l though many group s had had con t ac t— and con f l ict—with adheren t s of Juda i sm and I s lam . A written a lphabe t had been u sed by Eu ropean s to pre-serve and commun i ca te in forma t ion for many cen tur ies and Gu tenberg ' s invent ion of moveab le type in the m id -1 4 0 0 s had shown the way to a mechanica l mean s of "wr it ing"; by 1 4 9 2 , Eu rope was on its way to becom ing a pr int cu l ture .

By con tras t , in 1 4 9 2 in Nor th Ame r i ca , nat ive peop l e spoke hundred s of language s , belong ing to entirely different l ingu ist ic fam i l ies (e .g. , A thapas-can , U to-Az tecan , Chinookan , S i ouan , and A lgonqu ian ) and s truc tured their cu l tures in extraordinarily diverse econom i c and polit ica l forms . In the Grea t Bas in of the We s t , sma l l , loosely organized band s of U te s eked ou t a bare sub s i s tence by hun t ing and ga ther ing, while the seden tary Pueb l o peop le s of the Sou thwe s t and the Iroquoian s of the No r theas t had bo th highly devel-oped agr icu ltura l econom i e s and comp l ex mode s of polit ica l organizat ion . In sp ite of some common fea ture s , relig ious and my tholog ica l beliefs were a lso diverse . Among Nor th Amer i can peop le s a lone , eight different types of cre-at ion stor ies have been documen ted , with wide var iat ions among them . All of these differ substant ia l ly from the crea t ion stor ies of Juda i sm , Chr ist ianity , and I s lam .

A lso unlike Eu ropean cu l ture s , Nor th Amer i can peop le s did not u se a written a lphabe t . Their s were oral cu l ture s , relying on the spoken wo rd— whe ther chan ted , sung , or pre sen ted in lengthy narra t ive s—and the memory of tho se words to preserve impor tan t cu ltura l in forma t ion . The term lit-erature come s from the La t in littera, " letter . " Na t ive Ame r i can l iteratures were not , until long after the arrival of the Eu ropean s , wr itten " l ittera-tures ." Indeed , a s the ph rase oral literature m igh t appea r to be a con trad ic t ion in terms , some have cho sen to call the express ions of the oral tradit ion orature.

The se express ions were , like the language s , polit ical econom i e s , and reli-g ious beliefs of Nat ive Amer i can peop l e s , extremely var iou s . Eu rope an s in 1492 cou ld n ame the tragedy , the comedy , the ep ic , the ode , and a variety of lyric forms as types of l iterature . In Nat ive Ame r i ca there were a lmo s t surely (almost, becau se we have no ac tua l records that preda te 1492) such things as Kwak iut l winter ce remonie s , Winneba go tr ickster ta le cycles , Apache joke s , Hop i persona l nam ing and gr ievance chan t s , Yaqu i deer songs , Yuman d ream song s , P iman shamanic chan t s , Iroquois condo lence r itua ls , Nava jo cur ing and b le s s ing chan t s , and Chippewa song s of the G rea t Med-icine Socie ty , to n ame only some of the types of Na t ive Ame r i can verbal express ion .

Tha t there are many such types is unque s t i onab l e , bu t are the se literary types? Thi s que s t ion wou ld not make sen se to tradit iona l nat ive peop l e s , who

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do not have a category of language u se corre spond ing to our category of l iterature . F rom a We s tern perspec t ive , however , the types of native verbal express ion cou ld only be cons idered as l iterature after that late-eighteenth-and ear ly-nineteenth-century revolution in Eu ropean con sc iou sne s s known as Roman t i c i sm . In that per iod the concep t of l iterature shifted away from being def ined by the medium of express ion (all language preserved in letters) to the kind of express ion (those texts that emphas i zed the imag ina t ive and emo t iona l poss ib i l it ies of language ) . With this shift in the meaning of liter-ature, many Nat ive Amer i can verbal types cou ld qu ite comfortab ly be con-s idered literary.

We read these forms on the page , but it bears repea t ing that tradit iona l Nat ive Amer i can l iteratures or ig inate a s oral pe r fo rmance s . They are offered to aud i ence s as drama t i c events in t ime , language for the ear , rather than ob jec ts in space for the eye . And in per formance , a pau se , a qu i ckening of pace or a sudden retardat ion , a ge s ture , or a lower ing of the voice affects meaning . No t surpris ing ly , scholars differ abou t the bes t way to transfer per formance to the page . S om e have op ted for a stylized typography where type size and arrangemen t seek to convey some thing of the feeling of what an ac tua l per formance m ight have been like . O ther s , acknowledg ing that b lack marks on a white page canno t reproduce a living voice , have left it to the reader to imag ine these words in pe r fo rmance .

Thi s mat ter of trans lat ing the words effectively is controvers ia l . When we know that the original per formance u sed archa ic and un fam i l iar terms , shou ld we u se archa ic and un fam i l iar terms in the trans la t ion , even though they may appea r stiff and old- fashioned on the page? Wha t wou ld the con-temporary reader think of the following excerpt from J . N . B. Hewitt 's ren-dition of the Iroquois crea t ion story: " Th rough the crafty machina t ion s of the F ire Dragon of the Whi te Body , the con sum i ng jea lou sy of the aged pres id ing chie f was k indled aga ins t his young spou se . " Shou ld we instead opt for the non s tandard Eng l ish , the Red Eng l ish , or Reserva t ion Eng l ish a s it has been ca l led , of native col labora tors in the trans lat ion p roce s s —even if it may strike some readers not a s lively and colloqu ia l but illiterate? He re are a few lines from a con temporary trans lat ion in Red Eng l ish of a folktale from the Nor thwes t : "He told the chief: 'Yes, I remember , I though t of it, I have a worker[,] a boy, and I a sked him [to come ] but no , he didn 't want to leave his work and his ea t ings . ' " O f cou r se , if we trans la te the se texts into stan-dard , or "literary ," Eng l ish , we may have substant ia l ly m i srepre sen ted verbal express ion that , in the orig ina l , wou ld surely strike us as s trange . Con s ide r the following trans lat ion :

You have been

falling falling

Have you fallen

from the top of the sa lmon-

berry bu she s falling

falling

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This is attract ive by con temporary s tandard s , but , for the sake of ae s the t ic s , it gives up a good dea l of fidelity to the orig ina l , which never appeared on the pa ge .

While the que s t ion of how best to trans la te Nat ive Amer i can verbal expres-sion mu s t rema in open , read ing the words of native oral l iterature conveys some sen se of ind igenou s literary express ion a s it may have been be fore the com ing of the Eu ropean s .

V O Y A G E S O F D I S C O V E R Y

Co lumbu s was still mak ing voyages to Amer i ca ( 1 4 9 2 - 9 3 ; 1 4 9 3 - 9 6 ; 1498 ; and 1 5 0 2 - 0 4 ) as other Eu ropean s , following his examp l e , found their way to the We s t Ind ies . G iovanni C abo to (known a s J ohn C abo t to the Eng l ish for whom he sa i led) and his fellow Italian Amer igo Ve spucc i bo th c ro s sed the ocean before 1 5 0 0 , as did the Po r tugue se nat ive Pedro Cabra l . After that da te the voyagers be c ame too many to track . Unlike the V ik ing invas ion of five hundred years be fore , which had e s tab l i shed mode s t coas ta l se t t lemen ts in Nor th Amer i ca that Nat ive Ame r i can s soon wiped ou t , this second Euro-pean wave qu ick ly ga thered momen tum and ex tended itself far to the north and sou th of the Ca r ibbean bas in that C o lumbu s exp lored . C abo t was near the mou th of the S t . L aw rence in C an ad a the year before Ve spucc i found that of the Amazon , nearly five thou sand m i les away in Sou th Ame r i ca . Soon the Eu ropean s were es tab l ishing colonies everywhere . The first colonis ts lin-gered on the Ca r ibbean is land of H i spanio la following the depar ture of Co lumbu s in 1 4 9 3 . A l though that sma l l se t t lemen t of L a Navidad was soon destroyed in a clash with T a ino nat ives under the cac ique C aon abo of Magu -ana , the mass ive second voyage in 1493 c am e equ ipped to stay , and from that point on Spa in and Eu rope genera l ly ma in ta ined an aggress ive p re sence in the We s t Ind ies . The con s tan t batt les a long vague front iers with Nat ive Ame r i can s added fuel to the d i s sen s ion and polit ica l in-fighting among the sett lers themselve s , who se riots and mu t inies nearly ru ined se t t lemen t after se t t lemen t . John Sm i th 's exper ience dur ing the first J ame s town voyage of 1607 provides probab ly the mo s t f amou s examp le from Ang lo-Amer ica. Arrested and near ly execu ted (probab ly for o f fend ing his "be t ter s , " some thing he had the habit of doing) en route to Amer i ca in 1 6 0 7 , Sm i th was released in Virginia when the colony 's sea led ins truc t ions were opened , revea l ing that this apparen t ly mode s t soldier had been named to the pres t ig ious governing council even before the ships had left Eng land . C o lumbu s himsel f be c ame the focu s of fierce compe t i t ion s among greedy sett lers and officials in H is-paniola by the t ime of his third voyage and , str ipped of his property and powers by a royal official maddened by the uproar , wen t back to Spa in in cha in s in 1 5 0 0 .

Eu rope con t inued to expand in the New Wor ld am id the d isorder within se t t lemen t wa lls and the grea t violence ou t s ide . C o lumbu s found the ma in-land of Sou th Amer i ca in 1498 and Cen tra l Ame r i ca in 1 5 0 2 , by which t ime John C abo t and the Po r tugue se Cor te-Rea l bro thers , G a sp a r and M iguel , had been down the coas t of Nor th Amer i ca from L abrado r to the Che s a -peake , and Cabra l and Ve spucc i had covered the eas t coas t of Sou th Amer ica from the O r inoco River in presen t-day Venezue la to well sou th of the Rio de la P lata on the border of presen t-day U ruguay and Argen t ina. Be tween 1515

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and the 1520 s , Spa in , under the reign of Cha r l e s V, aggress ively reached ou t over the Gu l f of Mex i co , toward the Yuca tan penin su la and Mex ico and F lor ida and the I s thmu s of Panama , then sen t exped it ions into the heart of Nor th Amer i ca from the 1 5 2 0 s to the 1 5 4 0 s , cover ing a vast reg ion s tre tching from F lor ida to the Gu l f of Ca l i fornia and north a s far a s K an s a s and the Tenne s see River. At the s ame t ime , other Spani sh exp lorers and conqu i s ta-dors spread out over Sou th Amer i ca , especia l ly its west coas t , where in imi-tat ion of Cor tes 's Conque s t of Mex ico a decade ear l ier J u an P izarro over-c ame the Incan Emp i re , recently bese t with violent civil war . In that s ame per iod , the Po r tugue se es tab l ished their first pe rmanen t se t t lemen t s in Brazil , and the F rench explorer J a cqu e s Car t ier sa i led into the Gu l f of S t . L aw rence , then up its chie f river a s far a s the s ite of the future Mon trea l . Within fifty years of 1 4 9 2 , then , the eas t coas t s of much of bo th con t inen ts had been exp lored , and many of their major reg ions had been traversed ; the mo s t spec tacu lar of their peop l e s , the Aztecs and the Incas , had been con-que red ; and Eu rope had sett led in for a long stay .

Spa in under Ferd inand and Isabella and their grandson Cha r l e s V took the mo s t aggress ively expans ive role in Amer i ca . O the r Eu ropean na t ion s , mo s t con sp i cuou s ly F rance and Eng land , were more sel f-absorbed , awak-ening slowly to what was happening acro s s the sea . Their first exp lorers en joyed bad luck and incons is ten t suppor t . John and Seba s t ian C abo t had sa i led for Eng l ish me rchan t s and the mona rch s Henry VII and Henry VIII , bu t the first C abo t was lost on his voyage in 1498 , and the second kept his interest in Amer i ca alive only by en ter ing the service of the Span i sh C rown after 1 5 1 2 . A return to his adop ted home land of Eng land and a royal pen s ion from Edward VI c ame to him only in the 1 5 4 0 s , by which poin t he had comm i t ted himsel f to the search for an eas tward route to Ch ina via the seas north of Ru s s ia . In F rance , Car t ier en joyed early suppor t from Franci s I, but his failure to find gold and other r iches in the S t . L aw rence valley and his d ispu te with the nob l eman Roberva l , whom the k ing appoin ted to comm and Cart ier 's third voyage in 1 5 4 1 , led to pro found d i senchan tmen t in F rance . F i she rmen from bo th nat ions con t inued to harvest the f abu lou s r iches of the shoa ls off Nor th Amer i ca and summe red on the shore , drying their ca tch . Bu t not until the 1570 s for Eng land and the beg inning of the next cen tury for F rance , a s a new genera t ion of adven turers aro se and a per iod of com-mercia l expans ion set in , did broad pub l ic suppor t and governmen ta l s anc-tion comb ine to stir last ing cur ios ity and inves tmen t . A ser ies of luck less Nor th Amer i can voyages by the Eng l ish under Mart in Frob isher , Humph rey G i lbert , and then Wa l ter Ra legh ended in the tragedy of the " Lo s t Co lony " of Roanoke Is land in the 1 5 8 0 s . For ano ther twenty years few Eng l ish exp lorers made ser ious new efforts, a l though the pre s s bubb l ed with pub l ica t ions regard ing the New Wor ld , part icu lar ly the works of R ichard Hak luyt the younger , who se great collec t ions ga thered the fugitive records of Eng l i sh , and indeed Eu ropean , expans ion overseas . Hak luyt 's mas terwork , The Prin-cipall Navigations (1598—1600) , brough t the literary produc t ion s of coun t-less Eu ropean mar iners to the attent ion of a pub l ic newly stirred by wha t Shake spea re soon was to call this "brave new wor ld" of Euro-Amer i ca . Hak-luyt no twi ths tand ing, only in 1606 did a second Virginia colony set forth , and this one fa ltered grievous ly at the start with a shipwreck on Be rmuda (which was to insp ire Shake spea re ' s The Tempest), riots at J ame s town , near starva-t ion , and violent encoun te r s . By 1603 French interest had revived under the

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direct ion of a group of exp lorers and expans ionis ts , S amue l de Champ la in mos t significantly , who hoped for profit from the New Wor ld and , even more , a rou te through it to the fab led r iches of As ia . Sea soned from his voyages to Spani sh Amer i ca , Champ la in p icked up where Car t ier had left off sixty years earlier , founded pe rmanen t se t t lemen t s in the S t . L aw rence valley, and through his agen t s and followers pu shed F rench exp lorat ion a s far wes t as Lake Super ior at a t ime when the Eng l ish were still s trugg l ing in V irg inia and New Eng land se t t lemen t had ju s t begun at P lymou th .

The per iod of Eu ropean exp lorat ion in the New Wor ld p roduced a surpr is-ingly large and intr igu ing body of l iterature . While many manu sc r ip t s were archived and out of reach until the nine teen th century , a numbe r of texts found their way into print and were widely d i sper sed , thank s to the es tab l ish-men t of pr int ing in the half cen tury before 1 4 9 2 . Short ly after Co lumbu s ' s return to Spa in in early 1 4 9 3 , there appea red in pr int his letter to the court official Lu i s de S an tange l , narrat ing the voyage and lushly de scr ib ing the per-petua l spr ing Co lumbu s had found in the We s t Ind ies the previous au tumn . F rom the appea rance of that letter on , the pr int ing press and the Eu ropean expans ion into Amer i ca were reciproca l par ts of a s ing le eng ine . Wi thou t the ready d ispersa l of texts rich with imagery that stirred individual imag ina t ion and nat iona l amb i t ion in regard to the We s t Ind ies , Europe ' s movemen t west-ward wou ld have been b lun ted and perhap s thwarted . The sword of conque s t found in the pen , and in the pr int ing pre s s , an ind i spen sab le ally.

The great ma s s of early Ame r i can writ ings c ame from the hand s of Eur-opean s rather than the nat ive peop le s of the New Wor ld . Impor tan t excep-t ions happi ly exist . The nat ives had a lively oral cu l ture that va lued memory over mechanic s as a mean s of preserving texts, a l though amon g some group s such as the Aztecs written tradit ions ex isted (in Nor th Ame r i ca these records included shellwork belts and pa in ted anima l hides , tepee s , and shields) and many more group s u sed visua l records in sub t le and sophi s t ica ted ways . Su ch ca tacly sms as the Conque s t of Mex i co p roduced not only the Spani sh nar-ratives of Co r te s , Berna l Diaz del Cas t i l lo , and o thers bu t a lso nat ive re spon se s , many of which per ished with tho se who knew them . Tho se that survived in original nat ive charac ter s or in trans l iterated form have inesti-mab l e e thnographic and literary va lue . For in s tance , anonymou s native writ-ers work ing in the Nahua t l language of the Aztecs in 1528—s igni f ican t ly , they u sed the Roman a lphabe t in troduced by the Span i sh— l amen ted the fall of their cap ita l to Co r te s in the following l ines:

L I T E R A R Y C O N S E Q U E N C E S O F 1 4 9 2

Rroken spear s lie in the roads ; we have torn our hair in our grief. The hou se s are roof less now , and their wa lls are red with b lood .

No one read ing these four lines will eas i ly glorify the Conqu e s t of Mex i co or of the Amer i cas more genera l ly . The story of the t ran soceanic encoun ter , however , cea se s to be a ma t ter of easy con tras t s once one reads widely in

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 9

the texts on either s ide . A l though Eu ropean s comm i t ted atrocit ies in the New Wor ld , often they did so a s a resu lt of b lunder ing and m i scommunica t i on rather than cool , deliberate policy . In fact , the split be tween policy and act ion goe s to the heart of the infant At lant ic world of the s ixteenth century and is m irrored in and in f luenced by the charac ter of the writing that survives from the per iod . The great d i s tance separa t ing the hem i sphe re s made the coor-dinat ion of intent ion and per formance extremely difficult. The au thor i t ies at home lacked the knowledge to form pruden t or prac t ica l policy ; a s a resu lt many texts written by exp lorers or colonists were in tended a s "br ie f s " mean t to inform or in f luence policy decis ions made at a d i s tance . To cite a s imp le examp le , Co lumbu s himsel f wrote a point-by-point descr ipt ion of his second voyage in 1 4 9 5 , addre s sed to Ferd inand and Isabella in a ser ies of " i tem s " to which the specif ic re spon se s of the sovereigns were added by a court scr ibe . Mo re comp lex ly , Co r te s sough t to just ify his patent ly illegal invas ion of Mex-ico in 1519 by send ing several long letters to Cha r l e s V de fend ing his ac t ions and prom is ing lavish re turns if his conque s t cou ld proceed .

Mo s t documen t s sent from Amer i ca to the Eu ropean powers reveal such genera l ly political intent ions . Eu rope re sponded by i s su ing direct ives a imed at controlling events acro s s the sea . Even when good policies were ar t icu la ted in Eu rope , however , app lying them in the New Wor ld en ta i led further prob-lems . By the t ime ins truc t ions arrived in H i spaniola , Mex i co , J ame s town , or Quebec , new events in the colony m igh t have rendered them poin t less . Dis-tance made control bo th crucia l and difficult. Whe rea s forma l author ity typ-ically res ided in Eu rope , power a s an informa l fact of life and exper ience and c i rcum s tance belonged to Amer i ca , to tho se who cou ld seize and u se it or who acqu ired it by virtue of what they did rather than the official invest itures they bore . Mu t iny became so pervas ive a fact or fear in Ame r i ca precisely becau se individua ls and group s had , mora l ly and geographica l ly , grea t lati-tude in the thinly popu la ted colonia l enclave s . If writing served in this fluid, amb iguou s universe as a mean s to in f luence official policy at home , it a lso emerged as a mean s of just ifying ac t ions (as with Co r te s ) that violated or ignored Eu ropean direct ives.

Early Amer i can writing had , though , a third and more compe l l ing pu rpo se as a l iterature of wi tness . Tha t we know so mu ch abou t the Eu ropean dev-as ta t ion of the We s t Ind ies come s from the fact that some Eu ropean s re sponded powerfully to that devastat ion in writing. A l though no one typifies this mood better than Bar tolome de las C a s a s , who a s sa i led Spa in ' s ru thless des truc t ion of whole peop le s in Amer i ca , it is the rare Eu ropean documen t that does not reveal the bloody truths of Europe ' s colonia l d ream s . S tar t ing on the Co lumb ian voyages themselves and f lowering in the Spani sh We s t Ind ies , especia l ly in the 1 5 4 0 s and 1 5 5 0 s when deba te s abou t the m istreat-men t of the natives earnest ly moved the cler ics and governmen t officials at home , the New Wor ld insp ired an ou tpour ing of written express ion . No t all the literature of wi tness speak s to specific issues of policy , or part icu lar pub-lic deba te s , but in many of the texts one sen se s a critical eye , a point of view not likely to be swayed by the s logans of emp ire or faith or even wea lth . Writers such as Diaz del Cas t i l lo , the chronicler of Co r te s , and Eng land 's John Sm i th came from the underc las s of their native coun tr ie s , where but for the opportuni t ies represen ted by Amer ica they might well have spen t their days in s i lence . As a resu lt , their writing cou ld be subvers ive , even mu t inou s ,

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achieving its grea tes t dep th when it cap tu red a vision of Ame r i ca as more than a dependen t province of the O ld Wor ld , rather a s a p lace where mu ch that was genu inely new m igh t be learned .

P I L G R I M A N D P U R I T A N

The e s tab l i shmen t of P lymou th P lan ta t ion on the sou th shore of Ma s s a -chu se t t s in 1 6 2 0 brough t to Nor th Amer i ca a new kind of Eng l ish sett ler . The founders of the colony (later ca l led P i lgr ims by their leader and histo-rian William Brad ford) shared with their a l l ies , the Pur i tan s , a wish to purify Chr is t ian belief and prac t ice . Whe rea s the Pur i tan s initially were willing to work within the con f ines of the e s tab l i shed Chu r ch of Eng land , the P i lgr ims though t it so corrup t that they wished to separa te themselves from it comp le tely . While still in Eng land , they set up their own secret con-gregat ion in the village of Scrooby in No t t ingham shi re . O f ten sub jec t to per secu t ion and impr i sonmen t , the Scrooby Separa t i s t s (as they were a lso ca l led) saw little chance for rema in ing true to their faith a s long as they rema ined in Eng land . In 1 6 0 8 , five years after Queen E l izabeth had been succeeded by J am e s S tuar t , an enemy of all such re formers , the Scrooby congrega t ion left Eng land and sett led in The Ne the r land s , where , William Brad ford tells u s , they saw "fair and beaut i fu l c i t i e s " —bu t , a s foreigners , they were con fron ted by the "grisly face of poverty . " I sola ted by their lan-guage and unab l e to farm , they took up trades like weaving, Bradford 's choice , that prom i sed a living. Eventua l ly , fear ing that they m igh t lose their relig ious identity a s their children were swa l lowed up in Du tch cu l ture , they pet it ioned for the right to sett le in the vast Ame r i can territories of Eng land ' s Virginia Company . B acked by Eng l i sh investors , the ven ture was comme r -cial as well a s relig ious in na ture . Among the hundred peop l e on the May-flower there were a lmo s t three t imes as many secu lar sett lers as Separa t i s t s . Thi s initial group , set down on the raw Ma s s a chu se t t s shore in Novembe r 1620 , made hasty a rrangemen t s to f ace the winter . The colonis ts were helped over this "starving t ime " by their own fort itude and the essen t ia l a id of the nearby W amp ano a g Ind ians and their leader , Ma s s a so i t . F rom these " sma l l beg innings , " as Brad ford was eager to declare , grew a communi ty of mythica l import to the later na t ion .

Mu ch larger at the start was the well-f inanced effort that brough t a con-t ingent of Pur i tans under John Win throp to Ma s s a chu se t t s Bay , not far north of P lymou th , in 1630 . A l though the se sett lers initially expre s sed no overt intent ion to sever their ties with the Chu r ch of Eng land , and they are gen-erally regarded a s non separa t ing d i s sen ter s , the d i s tance they pu t be tween themselves and that church ' s hierarchy was e loquen t tes t imony of a different pu rpo se . On other i s sue s , they shared with the P i lgr ims the s ame bas i c beliefs : both agreed with Mar t in Lu the r that no pope or b i shop had a right to impo se any law on a Chr i s t ian without con sen t and bo th accep ted John Ca lvin 's view that God freely cho se (or "elec ted" ) tho se he wou ld save and tho se he wou ld damn eterna l ly . By 1 6 9 1 , when a new char ter sub sumed P lymou th a s an independen t colony under Ma s s a chu se t t s Bay , the P i lgr ims and Pur i tans had merged in all bu t memory .

Too much can be made of the Ca lvinis t doc tr ine of elec t ion ; those who have not read the ac tua l Pur itan se rmon s often come away from secondary

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sou rce s with the m i s taken notion that Pur itans ta lked abou t no thing but damna t ion . Pur i tans did indeed hold that God had cho sen , be fore their birth , those whom he wished to save ; but it doe s not follow that Pur i tans con s idered mos t of us to be born damned . Pur i tans argued that Adam broke the "Cov-enan t of Wo rk s " (the prom i se God made to Adam that he was immor ta l and cou ld live in Parad i se forever a s long as he obeyed God ' s comm andmen t s ) when he d isobeyed and a te of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thereby br ing ing sin and dea th into the world . Their centra l doc tr ine , however , was the new " Covenan t of G r a c e , " a b ind ing agreemen t that Chr i s t made with all peop le who believed in him and that he sea led with his Crucif ix ion , prom-is ing them eterna l life. Pur i tans thus addre s sed themselves not to the hope-lessly unregenera te but to the indifferent , and they addre s sed the heart more often than the m ind , always d is t ingu ishing be tween "his tor ica l" or rat iona l under s tand ing and heartfelt "saving fa i th . " The re is more joy in Pur itan life and though t than we often credit , and this joy is the direct resu lt of med i -tation on the doc tr ine of Chr is t 's redeem ing power . Edward Taylor is not a lone in mak ing his rap turou s litany of Chr is t 's a t tr ibu tes : "He is a l toge ther lovely in everything, lovely in H is per son , lovely in H i s na ture s , lovely in H i s propert ies , lovely in His off ices, lovely in H is titles, lovely in H is prac t ice , lovely in H is pu rcha se s and lovely in His rela t ions . " All of Taylor 's art is a med itat ion on the m iracu lou s gift of the Incarna t ion , and in this respec t his sensibility is typically Pur i tan . Anne Brads tree t , who is remarkab ly frank abou t con fe s s ing her relig ious doub t s , told her children that it was "upon this rock Chr is t J e su s " that she built her faith .

No t surpris ing ly , the Pur i tans held to the str ictest requ iremen t s regard-ing commun ion , or, a s they preferred to call it, the Lord 's Suppe r . It was the more impor tan t of the two s ac ramen t s they recognized (bap t ism being the o ther ) , and they guarded it with a zeal that set them apart from all other d issen ters . In the beg inning commun ion was regarded as a sign of elec t ion , to be taken only by tho se who had become chu rch membe r s by s tand ing before their m inister and elders and giving an accoun t of their convers ion . This ins is tence on cha l leng ing their membe r s made these New Eng land chu rche s more r igorous than any o thers and con f irmed the feel-ing that they were a specia l few. Thu s when John Win throp addre s sed the imm igran ts to the Bay Colony aboard the f lagship Arbella in 1 6 3 0 , he told them that the eyes of the world were on them and that they wou ld be an examp le for all , a "city upon a hill ." L ike William Brad ford for the Pil-gr ims , Win throp in his history of the Pur i tans wished to record the ac tu-alization of that dream .

W R I T I N G I N T O N G U E S

While the New Eng land colonies have convent iona l ly been regarded a s the cen terp iece of early Amer i can l iterature , the first Nor th Ame r i can sett le-men t s had been founded elsewhere years , even decade s , earlier . S t . Augu s -t ine , J ame s town , S an ta Fe , A lbany , and New York, for in s tance , are all older than Bo s ton . Mo re importan t , Eng l ish was not the only language in which early Nor th Amer i can texts were wr itten . Indeed , it was a tardy arrival in Amer ica , and its even tua l eme rgence as the dom inan t language of class ic Amer i can l iterature hardly was inevitable . To some extent , the large initial

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imm igrat ion to Bo s ton in the 1630 s , the high art icu lat ion of Pur itan cu ltura l idea ls , and the early e s tab l i shmen t of a college and a pr int ing pre s s in C am -br idge all gave New Eng land a subs tan t ia l edge . La te r political events wou ld make Eng l ish a usefu l l ingua franca for the colonies at large and , in t ime , the literary med ium of choice .

Be fore 1700 , however , and often long after it, other language s rema ined actively in u se not only for mundane pu rpo se s but a lso a s express ive vehicles . Part icu larly beyond the vague borders of the Eng l ish colonia l world (the shifting l ines be tween French C an ad a and New Eng land and the sou thern colonies and Spani sh F lor ida, for examp l e ) , those o ther language s were com-pletely dom inan t . Even within the limits of the eventua l thirteen colonies , however , large enclaves of speakers of other language s ex isted , especia l ly in the m idd le colonies . Among the noteworthy sett lers of New Ne ther land , for in s tance , were Belg ian Wa l loon s , near neighbors of the Du tch in Eu rope bu t speakers of a radically different language . The mix of " foreigners " in A lbany , begun a s a fur trade pos t by Ne ther lander me rchan t s on the upper Hud son , made it a minority Du tch town , its popu la t ion made up of sett lers of Scan-dinavian , F rench , Po r tugue se , Eng l i sh , Irish , Sco t s , Ge rman , Afr ican , and We s t Indian der iva t ion—even peop le from Spa in , then the enemy of the Ne ther lander s , and from faraway C roa t ia . For two cen tur ies after New Ne th-er land was conque red by the Eng l ish in 1664 and renamed New York , Du tch and other language s were widely u sed there in pub l ic and private life before eventua l ly dying ou t . S im i lar l ingu ist ic tran s forma t ion s , with the socia l and persona l losses they bring, occurred in o ther Eng l ish-con trolled reg ions that wou ld eventua l ly form the Uni ted S ta te s . In Pennsylvania, where large groups of Pro tes tan ts from con t inen ta l Eu rope were welcomed by William Penn , Ge rman in part icu lar rema in s a vital language to this day , a l though the friction be tween G e rm an communi t i e s there and " the Eng l i sh " rem inds us that language is a ground of con te s t be tween e thnic group s , not ju s t of self-express ion within each . In fact , the first item pr inted in Pennsylvania, a l though it i s sued from the pre s s e s tab l i shed by an imm igran t Eng l i shman , was in Ge rman , and the largest book pr inted in any of the colonies before the Revolut ion was in the s ame language . When we read Ame r i can history backward , look ing for early preceden t s of nat iona l inst itut ions , prac t ice s , and va lues , we are likely to m iss the radica l l ingu ist ic and cu l tura l diversity of the colonia l world. Reade r s of the colonia l record need to a t tend to the many tongue s through which the colonis ts art icu la ted their exper ience s , vision , and va lues . It is to this end that trans la ted selec t ions from works written by non-Eng l ish colonis ts are included a long with Eng l ish texts to represen t the first full cen tury of Nor th Ame r i can writing. Part of the u se fu lne s s of such a broad survey is the ins ight it offers into the theme s , forms , and concern s shared by many peop les involved in the cu ltura l and territorial expans ion of Eu ropean peop les at the t ime .

A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E IN 1 7 0 0

A long the eas tern seaboa rd by 1700 , mo s t of the colonies that were to unite in seek ing independence from Brita in toward the end of the eigh teen th cen-tury had been founded— Geo rg ia was to follow in the 1 7 3 0 s . As Brita in

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sough t to consol ida te and unify its overseas po s se s s ion s , the map began to re semb le that of 1776 , and Eng l ish had a lready emerged a s a powerfu l inter-colonia l tool . Bu t up and down the coas t , a surpr is ing variety of peop les was in evidence , mo s t of whom had become accu s tomed to the transa t lan t ic or local pub l ica t ion of their writ ings. At the end of the first full cen tury of Eu ropean colonizat ion , the pr int ing press was act ive in many areas , from C ambr idge and Bo s ton to New York, Philadelphia, and Annapol i s . From 1696 to 1700 , to be su re , only abou t 2 5 0 separa te i tems were i s sued in all these p lace s comb ined . A l though this is a sma l l numbe r compa red to the ou tpu t of the pr inters of London at the t ime , it mu s t be remembe red that pr int ing was es tab l ished in the Amer i can colonies before it was a l lowed in mos t of Eng land , where restrictive laws, the last of them repea led a s late a s 1693 , had long con f ined pr int ing to four loca t ions : London , York, Oxford , and C ambr idge . In this regard , if only becau se of the isolat ion of the Amer-ican provinces by the ocean , they ven tured into the modern world earlier than their provincial Eng l ish coun terpar t s .

The literary s ituat ion in Amer ica three cen tur ies ago is sugge s ted by a brief exam ina t ion of the produc t s of the pre s se s then in opera t ion . Among tho se 2 5 0 items pub l ished at the century 's end was a whole library of texts by the mos t prolific colonia l au thor , Co t ton Ma ther . In this per iod , he pub l i shed more than three dozen titles, includ ing such things as his accoun t of the "tearful dec ade " (1688—98) of warfare be tween New Eng land and New F rance and the latter 's Indian a ll ies, which incorpora ted his f amou s narrat ive of the bloody e scape of Hannah Du s tan from her cap tor s . Ma the r a lso pub-lished several b iographies of New Eng land ' s found ing m inisters and penned treat ises on the proper behavior of servants toward their mas ter s , on the "well-ordered fami ly ," and on the spiritua l risks run by seamen . H e a l so i s sued a warning aga ins t " impo s tors pre tend ing to be m in i s ter s . " And he wrote Pillars of Salt, a ven ture into cr imina l b iography that had relig ious origins but that a lso ref lected the impor tance of an emergen t popu lar (as oppo sed to elite) literary cu l ture on both s ides of the At lant ic .

De sp i te their tendency to mirror the sel f-regard ing a spec t of Pur itan though t , even Ma ther ' s works rem ind us that Amer i ca in 1 7 0 0 was opening ou tward . In the Magnalia Christi Americana, pub l i shed ju s t after the start of the new century , Ma the r himsel f told an anecdo te that conveys the change at hand . A newly tra ined m inister who had journeyed north from M a s s a chu -setts Bay to Ma ine was preaching to a group of hardened fishermen. He was urg ing his l isteners not to "con trad ic t the ma in end of P lan t ing this Wilder-ne s s , " the service of God and God ' s pu rpo se s , when a membe r of the make-shift gather ing had the effrontery to con trad ic t him: "S ir , you are m i s taken , you think you are P reaching to the Peop le at the Bay ; our ma in end was to ca tch F i sh . " Even in New Eng land , Ma the r sugge s t s , ma in end s differed profound ly from p lace to p lace and from communi ty to communi ty . E lse-where , the rich array of pu rpo se s was ref lected in the diverse i tems issued by Amer ican pr inters at the t ime when Ma ther ' s Magnalia was ju s t appea r ing (this large book was first pub l i shed in London , not in Bo s ton , it m ight be no ted ) . The re was a pa ir of texts, for in s tance , dea l ing with the Nat ive Amer-icans of New York that sugge s t how colonia l ism was a ltered by the drive toward cross-cu ltura l interact ion . One reported on a con ference held in 1696 between the governor of that "province , " as all the colonies were then being

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ca l led , and the "F ive . . . Na t ion s of Ind ian s , " the Iroquois , a dynam ic con-federacy of peop le s who had long controlled mu ch of New York 's territory and exac ted tr ibute from far d istant nat ive peop l e s as well. Thi s was a kind of text that proliferated throughou t New York 's colonia l era, when the gov-ernor and his agen t s made regu lar visits to the importan t Iroquois cap ita l at Ononda g a to listen to the concern s of these Eng l ish a l l ies. The second text concerning nat ive peop le s in New York a lso reflected this unique cross-cu ltura l pa t tern . In the 1690 s , when the F rench and Eng l ish emp ire s were com ing into ser ious conflict in Amer i ca , nat ive peop l e s were frequent ly swept up in the fray. The "Propos i t ions M ad e by the F ive Na t ion s of Ind ian s " to New York 's governor in 1698 accord ing ly en trea ted him to pro tec t the Iro-quois from ha ra s smen t by New France ' s Ind ian a l l ies, who were moving eas tward into Iroquoia and fiercely ra id ing the villages there .

Su ch texts, reaching ac ro s s the boundar i e s be tween the Ind ian nat ions and colonia l powers , ca tch the d ip loma t ic tone of cross-cu l tura l relat ions in the M ida t lan t ic reg ion . The comp lex ity of the polit ica l cu l ture in early Amer-ica is borne out in other texts of the era as well , such a s God's Protecting Providence ( 1 6 9 9 ) , Philadelphian Jona than Dick inson ' s much repr inted accoun t of his shipwreck and Ind ian captivity in Span i sh F lor ida, which comb ined piety , adven ture , and exo t ic ism . S im i lar ly exotic was Barbarian Cruelties ( 1 7 0 0 ) , which told of Eu ropean cap t ives in Nor th Afr ica, an area of the g lobe that was long to be the focu s of We s te rne r s ' anx iet ies and , in the post-Revolut ionary era, an Amer i can war or two . Bu t such adven turou s narrat ives were not all s ited in exotic and d is tan t loca les . S om e , like the seem ing ly mundane textbook in the Eng l i sh language written by Franci s Daniel Pas tor ius and a imed not only at young Ame r i can s but a lso (as the author 's own Ge rmanic- sound ing Eng l ish sugge s ted ) at " tho se who from for-eign coun tr ies and nat ions come to sett le among s t u s , " sugge s t less drama t ic but still impor tan t cross-cu l tura l conce rn s . Relig ion , a dom inan t theme in the Amer i can pre s s in 1 7 0 0 , was itself linked to s trong socia l i s sue s , as was demon s t ra ted by Daniel Gou ld ' s accoun t of the execu t ion of Quaker dis-sen ters in Bo s ton fifty years earlier , a work that appea red in New York in 1 7 0 0 . The pr inter of Gou ld ' s book , in fact , a lso i s sued a pair of d i s sen t ing tracts by Quaker and S a l em me rchan t Thom a s Mau l e , includ ing one ca l led New England's Persecutors Mauled with Their Own Weapons. Mau le ' s name became f amou s to later genera t ion s of readers through Na thaniel Haw-thorne 's none too accu ra te a s socia t ion of it with the cu r se doom ing the Pyn-cheon family in his S a l em novel The House of the Seven Gables. Finally , round ing out the century , c am e The Selling of Joseph by S amue l Sewa l l , among the ear l iest ant is lavery tracts written and pub l i shed in Amer ica and thus a work of growing impo r tance in the future . A l though the pub l ished i tems from this ha lf decade of the seven teen th cen tury a lso comp r i sed a lma-nac s and governmen ta l pub l i ca t ion s , such i tems con tr ibu ted a s well to the e s tab l i shmen t of print cu l ture and , u lt imately , of literary trad it ions in British Amer i ca . It was to be the a lmanac , one reca l ls , that helped make Ben j am in Frank l in 's fortune a s a printer , and it was Frank l in who conver ted that every-day form into a vehicle of rare wit and sturdy Eng l i sh .

L I T E R A T U R E T O 1 7 0 0

T E X T S C O N T E X T S

Peoples indigenous to the Americas orally perform and transmit a variety of "literary" genres that include, among others, speeches, songs, and stories

1000—1300 Anasazi communities inhabit southwestern regions. 1492 Christopher Columbus arrives in the Bahamas • between 4 and 7 million Native Americans estimated in present-day United States, including Alaska

1493 Columbus, "Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage"

1500 Native American populations begin to be ravaged by European diseases

1514 Bartolome de las Casas petitions Spanish crown to treat Native American peoples like other human (subject) popula-tions 1519—21 Cortes conquers Aztecs in Mexico

I 526 Spanish explorers bring first African slaves to South Carolina 1539 First printing press in the Americas set up in Mexico City • Hernando de Soto invades Florida

1542 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, The Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

1552 Bartolome de las Casas, The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies

1558-1603 Reign of Elizabeth I

c. 1 568 Bernal Diaz del Castillo composes The True History of the Conquest of New

Spain (pub. 1632)

1 584 Walter Ralegh lands on "island" of Roanoke; names it "Virginia" for Queen Elizabeth

1588 Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia

1603—13 Samuel de Champlain explores the St. Lawrence River; founds Quebec

1605 Garcilaso de la Vega, The Florida of the Inca

Boldface titles indicate works in the anthology.

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T E X T S C O N T E X T S

1607 Jamestown is established in Virginia • Powhatan confederacy prevents colonists from starving; teaches them to plant tobacco

1613 Samuel de Champlain, The Voyages of Sietir de Champlain

1619 Twenty Africans arrive in Jamestown on a Dutch vessel as indentured servants

1620 Mayflower drops anchor in Plymouth Harbor

1621 First Thanksgiving, at Plymouth

1624 John Smith, The General History of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles

1630 John Winthrop delivers his sermon 1630-43 Immigration of English Puritans A Model of Christian Charity (pub. 1838) to Massachusetts Bay

1630-50 William Bradford writes Of Plymouth Plantation (pub. 1856)

1637 Thomas Morton, New England 1637 PequotWar Canaan

1638 Anne Hutchinson banished from Bay Colony for challenging Puritan beliefs.

1643 Roger Williams, A Key into the Langitage of America

1650 Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse

1655 Adriaen Van der Donck, A Description of New Netherland

1661 Jacob Steendam, "The Praise of New Netherland"

1662 Michael Wigglesworth, Tlte Day of Doom

1673-1729 Samuel Sewall keeps his Diary (pub. 1878-82)

1675—78 King Philip's War destroys power of Native American tribes in New England

1681 William Penn founds Pennsylvania

1682 Mar) Rowlandson's Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration

1682—1 725 Edward Taylor continues his Preparatory Meditations (pub. 1939, 1960)

1684 Francis Daniel Pastorius, Positive Information from America

1692 Salem witch trials

1702 Cotton Mather, Magtialia Christi Americana

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American Literature 1 7 0 0 -1 8 2 0

AN E X P A N D I N G W O R L D A N D U N I V E R S E

By the t ime of Co t ton Ma ther ' s dea th in 1728 , which symbolica l ly mark s the pas s ing of Pur i tanism a s the colonists had exper ienced it, the imag inat ive world he and other clerical writers strove to ma in ta in was cha l lenged in a variety of ways. The eigh teen th cen tury saw eno rmou s ch ange s —econom i c , socia l , philosophica l , and scien t i f ic— tha t inevitably affected the in f luence and author ity of clergymen like Ma the r and trans formed the ways in which they under s tood the world . Mo s t importan t , many intellectua ls now believed in the power of the human m ind to comp rehend the universe a s never be fore , part icu larly through the laws of phys ics as they recent ly had been de scr ibed by the great I saac New ton (1642—1727) . Inevitably , then , scr ip ture be c ame more a handma iden than a gu ide to me taphy s ic s . Second , and of equa l impor tance , through the in f luence of the Eng l ish me taphy s ic ian John Locke (1632—1704) there a ro se jpw p sy rhn loc r i r a l p a r a d i gm s that promu lga ted human sympa tr iyTTa ther lhan superna tura l grace , a s the bas i s for the mora l HfeTAs elabora ted by Adam Sm i th and other thinkers , this rel iance on human sympathy or " sen t imen t " as the cata lyst for mora l choice and act ion concom -itantly encouraged the belief that each individual had the power to control his or her spiritua l dest iny . Su ch cha l lenges to the theocen tr ic world of the colonia l clergy were part of the immen se change s in We s tern though t descr ibed by histor ians as the Enl igh tenmen t .

The Enl igh tenmen t had polit ical a s well a s scientific and relig ious impli-ca t ions . By the end of the century , colonis ts were in the proce s s of e s tab-lishing a polity the likes of which the world had not yet seen . The re wou ld be a relig ious elemen t to this new nat ion , but it wou ld be only one componen t of a state who se dest iny , while still though t of as divinely gua ran teed , was unders tood to be achievab le on earth through the spread of democra t i c prin-cip les . The literature of this cen tury reflected and ex tended the se and other new empha se s in We s tern though t and cu l ture .

The eigh teen th century brough t a new world into being in the mos t bas ic and striking ways . The increase in popu la t ion a lone helps accoun t for the greater diversity of op inion in relig ious as well a s in polit ical life that marked it and its l iterature . In 1 6 7 0 , for examp l e , the popu la t ion of the colonies numbe red approx imately 1 1 1 , 0 0 0 . Thirty years later it was more than 2 5 0 , 0 0 0 ; by 1 7 6 0 , if one includes Georg ia , it reached 1 , 6 0 0 , 0 0 0 — and the sett led area had tripled . The demand for and pr ice of colonia l goods increased in Eng land , and vast fortunes were to be made in New Eng land with any bu s ine s s connec ted with shipbu i ld ing: especia l ly t imber , tar, and

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p itch . V irg inia p lanters became rich through tobacco ; and r ice and indigo from the Carol inas were in con s tan t demand . Further , compa red with such crowded cit ies as London , the colonies were hea lthier and cheape r , and pro-mo t iona l l iterature as well as persona l tes t imony pa in ted Br it ish Nor th Amer-ica as a reg ion in which one cou ld take charge of and transform one 's life. Thu s those who cou ld arrange their pa s s a ge , either by paying for it outr ight or mor tgag ing it through inden tured service , arrived in great numbe r s : Bos-ton , for examp le , a lmos t doub led in size from 1 7 0 0 to 1720 . The colonies were ethnica l ly d iverse ; the great m igrat ion dur ing the first half of the eigh-teenth cen tury was not primarily Eng l i sh . Du tch and G e rman s c ame in large numbe r s and so did French Pro tes tan t s . By this t ime , too , Jewi sh me rchan t s and craf t smen es tab l ished themselves in New York and Philadelphia.

This rapidly expand ing t rade—ha l lmark of what we now recognize as the beg inning of modern con sume r i sm— l inked the colonies to other areas in what histor ians call the At lant ic R im , a reg ion encompa s s i ng Eu rope , Africa, and the Ca r ibbean bas in a s well a s Nor th and Sou th Amer i ca . The rim had a comp lex, mu l t ie thnic , mu lt iracia l popu la t ion uni ted by their s ta tus as laborers . Thu s even a s the new and seem ing ly insat iab le des ire for goods brough t great wea lth to p lanters and me rchan t s , it crea ted at the other end of the socia l spec trum the world 's first mu l t ie thnic work ing c las s , one who se membe r s often had to endu re great cruelty . The numbe r s of ens laved Afri-can s increased in this per iod , for examp l e , even a s some of them , typified here by O laudah Equ iano , began to speak ou t abou t their exper iences and cond it ion . O ther groups like the New Eng land Ind ians su f fered in different ways . E s t ima ted to numbe r 2 5 , 0 0 0 in 1 6 0 0 , they a lready had been reduced by one-third dur ing the p lague of 1616—18 and decl ined steadi ly thereafter ; many Nat ive Amer i can communi t i e s d i sappeared entirely dur ing this per iod of expans ion in the Nor theas t . Their fate in the sou thern colonies and the Ca r ibbean is lands , often linked to p lan ta t ion slavery , was no better .

This econom i c take-off affected the very warp and woo f of socia l organi-zat ion . New Eng land towns , for examp le , long viewed a s pillars of stability , often were full of acr imoniou s deba te be tween first sett lers and newcome r s as they b ickered over d im inishing land or the proper form and sub s tance of worship . When the colonies ' first towns were formed , for examp le , ac reage was appor t ioned to sett lers and a l lotted free ; bu t by 1713 specu la tor s in land were hard at work , buying as mu ch a s po s s ib le for a s little a s poss ib le and selling high . Many a town history records the wrang l ing of sp l inter group s and the e s tab l i shmen t of a " second " chu rch and the inevitab le remova l of fami l ies and group s who sough t r icher farm lands . Unde r new econom i c and relig ious p re s su re s , the idea of a "communi ty " of mu tua l ly helpful sou l s was fast d i sappear ing , and the colonis ts ' gradua l awakening to the incongru ity of the slavery that they tolerated or encou ra ged only further s tre tched the capaci ty of their rhetoric of Chr i s t ian charity .

While life in many parts of the colonies rema ined difficult , the hardships and danger s the first sett lers faced were most ly ove rcome , and more and more coloni s t s , part icu lar ly tho se a long the coas t , emu la ted the cu l ture of me tropol i tan London . Concom i tan t ly , once colonis t s began to expect the re f inemen ts made ava i lab le by their extens ive trad ing ne tworks , they better under s tood what was specia l or unique abou t their exper ience in the New Wor ld . Uni ted by the common exper ience of ocean pa s s a ge and the des ire

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to make new lives for themselves , these thou sand s of em igran t s slowly but inexorably began to realize that they had more in c ommon a s inhab i tan ts of Amer ica than they did a s cit izens of a Eu rope that rapidly receded into mem -ory. In 1702 no one wou ld have dreamed of an independen t union of colo-nies, but by the 1 7 5 0 s it was a dist inct poss ibility .

E N L I G H T E N M E N T ID E A L S

By the early eighteenth century , scient ists and phi losophers had po sed great cha l lenges to seven teen th-cen tury beliefs , and the "mode rn " per iod a s we under s tand it emerged from their efforts to conceive human s and their uni-verse in new terms , even a s they strugg led to yoke this brave new world to what they learned in scr ip ture . Indeed , scien t is ts like New ton and philoso-phers like Locke sough t to resolve implicit conf l icts be tween their d iscover ies and traditionally held Chr is t ian truths . Be c au se they believed that God worked in reasonab le , comprehen s ib l e ways with humank ind uppe rmo s t , they saw no thing heret ica l in argu ing that the universe was an orderly sys tem such that by the app l icat ion of reason humani ty wou ld comp rehend its laws , or that one 's sup reme ob l igat ion was to relate to one 's fellows through an inna te and thus natura l power of sympathy . Bu t the inevitab le result of such inqu ir ies made the universe seem more rational and benevolent than it had been represen ted in Pur itan doc tr ine . S imilarly , peop le increas ing ly def ined their highest dut ies in socia l rather than in spiritual terms .

Bec au se sc ience made the world seem more comp rehen s ib l e , many pu t less s tock in revea led religion . O ften these new scien t is ts and phi losophers were avowedly , or were ca l led , Dei s t s ; they deduced the ex is tence of a sup reme being from the cons truc t ion of the universe itself rather than from the B ib le . "A crea t ion , " as one d is t ingu ished historian has pu t it, "pre sup-po se s a crea tor . " A ha rmoniou s universe procla imed the bene f icence of God . A numbe r of seven teen th-cen tury mode s of though t—Brad ford ' s and Win-throp's penchan t for the a l legorica l and emb l ema t i c , seeing every natura l and human event as a me s s a ge from God , for i n s t ance— seemed anachro-nistic and qua in t . Peop le were less interested in the me taphys ica l wisdom of introspect ive divines than in the progress of ordinary individua ls , relat ing now to their fellow beings through emo t ion s and exper iences they shared a s colonists . This no doub t accoun t s for the popu lar ity of Ben j am in Frank l in 's Autobiography. Many now a s sumed that humank ind was natura l ly good and thus dwelt on neither the Fall nor the Incarna t ion , but rather on how think-ing, feeling peop le shared the bonds of their common humani ty . They were not interested in theology but in humank ind ' s own na ture , and frequent ly cited A lexander Pope 's f amou s coup le t :

Know then thyself, p re sume not God to scan , The proper study of mank ind is man .

Locke sa id that "our bu s ine s s " here on earth "is not to know all things , but those which concern our conduc t . " In sugge s t ing that we are not born with a set of inna te ideas of good or evil and that the m ind is rather like a blank wax tablet (a tabula rasa) on which exper iences are inscr ibed , Locke qualified tradit ional belief and sugge s ted that the more that we unders tood

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and sympa thized with our fellow men and women , the r icher our socia l and spiritual lives wou ld be .

R E A S O N A N D R E L I G I O N : T H E G R E A T A W A K E N I N G

Bu t the old beliefs did not die easily , and a s early as the 1730 s a conservat ive react ion aga ins t the worldview of the new sc ience and psychology followed a s some in tel lec tua ls , aware of the new though t but intent on ma in ta in ing the final truth of revea led relig ion , res isted the relig ious imp l ica t ions of Enl igh tenmen t pr incip les . Bu t the genie had e scaped from the bott le , and this react ion was indelibly marked by the new though t it oppo sed . One unex-pec ted resu lt , for examp le , was that the first ha lf of the eigh teen th century wi tnessed a numbe r of relig ious revivals in bo th Eng land and Amer ica that in part were fueled by the new empha s i s on emo t ion a s a componen t of human exper ience . A l though some histor ians view the revivals as de spera te efforts to reasser t ou tmoded Pur itan va lues in the f ace of the new , in fact the relig ious fires that burned so intensely be tween 1735 and 1750 were themselves the direct produc t of the new cu lt of feeling who se founda t ion Locke had laid. Now m inisters as well a s phi losophers argued that our grea tes t p l easure was derived from the good we did for o thers , and that our sympa the t ic emo t ion s (our joys as well a s our tears) were not s igns of human-kind 's fallen state but rather a gua ran tee of our g lor ious fu ture . The African Amer i can poe t Phillis Whea t ley , for examp l e , who se poem on the dea th of the it inerant Me thod i s t Geo rge Whitef ield (1714—1770) made her f amou s , sa id that Whitef ield prayed that "grace in every heart m ight dwell" and longed to see "Amer i ca excell . " Following his many succe s s fu l relig ious revivals in Eng land , Whitef ield emba rked on a preaching tour a long the At lant ic sea-board colonies in 1739—40, a visit that was punc tua ted by great emo t iona l -ism . Bu t in this he only followed the similarly "extraordinary c i rcum s tance s " that had occurred in No r thamp ton , Ma s s achu se t t s , under the leadership of Jona than Edwards in the 1 7 3 0 s and that have come to be synonymou s with the " G rea t Awakening . "

Edwa rd s a lso had read his Locke and unde r s tood that if his par ishioners were to be awakened from their spiritua l s lumbe r s they had to exper ience religion in a more heartfelt way , not ju s t strive to comp rehend it intellectu-ally. Thu s , from his t ime a s a young m inister under the tu telage of his em i-nen t grandfa ther , the Reverend So lomon S toddard , Edwa rd s began to re juvenate the bas i c tenets of Ca lv in i sm , includ ing that of uncond i t iona l elec t ion , the one doc tr ine mo s t difficult for eigh teen th-cen tury m inds to accep t . Edwa rd s ins isted that such doc tr ines made sen se in terms of Enlight-enmen t sc ience . Hamme r i ng at his aud i ence through what one histor ian ha s ca l led a "rhetor ic of sen s a t i on , " he pe r suaded his congrega t ion that God ' s sovereignty was not only a mos t reasonab l e doc tr ine but a l so the mo s t "delight fu l , " and appea red to him in an a lmo s t sen suou s way a s "exceed ing p leasan t , bright , and swee t . " In carefully reasoned , ca lm ly a rgued pro se , a s ha rmoniou s and a s ordered a s anything the age p roduced , Edwa rd s brough t many in his aud i ence to unde r s tand that "if the great things of religion are rightly under s tood , they will affect the hear t . " Thu s , while mo s t peop le remembe r Edwa rd s for his fr ightening se rmon Sinners in the Hands of an

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Angry God, he was much more moved by the exper ience of joy that his faith brough t him . Mo re typical is his "Per sona l Narra t ive " or his apo s t rophe to S a ra P ierpont (whom he wou ld marry ) , for both testify to how experient ially moving he found true relig ious feeling. The se are founda t iona l texts for under s tand ing the rise of the sen t imen ta l in l iterature and We s te rn cu l ture generally .

The Awakening in turn engendered a s many crit ics as suppor ter s , for many believed that revivalists were too given over to "en thu s ia sm " at the expen se of their reason . Thu s Edwards and o thers who believed in the new light that God had shed over them had to expend much t ime and energy in pamphle t wars with prom inen t clergy such a s Bo s ton ' s Cha r l e s Ch auncy who , from his pu lp it in that city 's F irst Chu rch , compa red the an t ics of the revived to the hysteria that Anne Hu tch in son earlier had ins t iga ted . Heirs to a rap id expan-sion of print cu l ture that fueled the controvers ies over revival, opponen t s like Edwards and Chauncy , and others on both s ides of the relig ious que s t ion , u sed the pre s se s as never be fore to win over pub l ic op inion . Inevitably , the fires of revival burned lower ; when Edwa rd s himsel f tried to con sol ida te his succe s s in No r thamp ton and in 1749 demanded from app l i can t s persona l accoun t s of convers ion be fore adm i t t ing them to chu rch membe r ship , he was accu sed of being a react ionary , removed from his pu lp it , and effectively s i lenced . He spen t the next few years as a m iss ionary to the Ame r i can Ind ians in S tockbr idge , Ma s s achu se t t s , a town forty m i les wes t of No r thamp ton , imi-tat ing the call of the Reverend David Bra inard , a young man who , had he lived, wou ld have marr ied Edwards 's daugh ter Je ru sha . The re Edwa rd s rema ined until invited to become pres iden t of the Col lege of New Jersey . H i s dea th in Pr ince ton was the direct resu lt of his being inocu la ted aga ins t sma l l-pox, which he had done to set an examp le for his fr ightened and supers t i t ious s tuden t s ; it serves as a vivid rem inder of how comp l i ca ted in any one individ-ual the re spon se to the "new sc i ence " cou ld become .

IM P E R I A L P O L I T I C S

If religion occup i ed many colonis ts in the first ha lf of the eigh teen th century , after 1763 , when Grea t Br ita in had consol ida ted its emp ire in the New Wor ld with victory over the F rench in C an ada , polit ics dom ina ted its second half. On J une 7, 1776 , at the second Con t inen ta l Cong re s s , R ichard Henry Lee of Virginia moved that " the se united colonies are , and of a right ough t to be , free and independen t s ta te s . " A comm i t tee was du ly appoin ted to prepare a declara t ion of independence , and it was i s sued on Ju ly 4. A l though the se mo t ion s and their swiftness took some delega tes by su rp r i se— the pu rpo se of the congre s s had , after all, not been to declare independence but to protest the u surpa t ion of rights by k ing and Par l iamen t and to effect a comp rom i se with the home land—o the r s saw them a s the inevitab le con sequence of the events of the preced ing decade . The S t amp Act of 1764 , tax ing all new spa-per s , legal documen t s , and l icenses , had infur iated Bo s tonian s and resu l ted in the burning of the governor 's pa lace ; the V irg inian Patr ick Henry had taken the occas ion to speak with pas s ion aga ins t taxat ion without represen-tat ion . In 1770 a Bo s ton mob had been fired on by Br it ish sold iers . Th ree years later was the f amou s " Tea Party , " when colonis ts dre s sed a s Na t ive

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Amer i can s and dumped Eng l ish tea into Bo s ton harbor a s a protest aga ins t paying taxes on it. Thi s event tested the limits of Brit ish ru le . In adop t ing the co s tume of Nat ive Ame r i can s , the se pro tes ters declared themselves anti-thet ica l to everything Br it ish . The news of the April 1775 con fron ta t ion with the British in Conco rd and Lex ing ton , Ma s s achu se t t s , was still on everyone 's tongue in Philadelphia when the Second Con t inen ta l Cong re s s convened that May .

A l though the drama of these events and the persona l su f fer ing they cau sed canno t be undere s t ima ted , colonis ts a l so were tran s formed into revolut ion-ar ies through the power of the word . Thom a s Pa ine 's pamphle t Common Sense, pub l i shed in J anua ry 1776 , has been cred ited with t ipp ing the sca les toward revolut ion ; but it was preceded by a vast l iterature that took to heart the a rgumen t s of the Whig oppos i t ion in Eng land . The Whigs , the so-ca l led country a s oppo sed to court party , inveighed aga ins t luxury and tyranny in terms that re sona ted acro s s the At lant ic . We see Whig party pr incip les app l ied to the Amer i can strand in Royall Tyler 's play The Contrast ( 1 7 8 7 ) . In argu ing that separa t ion from Eng land was the only reasonab l e cou r se and that " the A lm igh ty" had p lan ted these feelings in us "for good and wise pur-po se s , " Pa ine appea l ed to bas ic tene ts of the Enl igh tenmen t . H is clar ion call to those that "love mank ind , " tho se "that dare oppo se not only the tyranny but the tyrant , stand forth ! " did not go unheeded . Ame r i can s needed an apolog ist for the Revolut ion , and in Decembe r 1776 , when Washing ton ' s troops were at their mo s t demora l ized , it was , aga in , Pa ine 's first Crisis paper—popu lar ly ca l led The American Crisis—that was read to all the regi-men t s and was sa id to have insp ired their future succe s s .

Pa ine first c am e to Amer ica in 1774 with a note from Ben j am in Frank l in recommend ing him to pub l ishers and ed itors . He was only one of a numbe r of young writers who took advan tage of the revolut ion in print cu l ture that was to make au thor ship a s we know it po s s ib le . This was , in fact , the great age of the new spaper and the mora l essay ; Frank l in tells us that he modeled his own style on the clarity , good sen se , and s imp l icity of the Eng l i sh essayists Jo seph Add ison and R ichard S tee le . The first new spaper in the colonies appea red in 1704 , and by the t ime of the Revolut ion there were a lmo s t fifty paper s and forty magaz ine s . The great cry was for a "na t iona l l i tera ture" (meaning ant i-Br it ish ) , and the political events of the 1 7 7 0 s were advanta-geou s for a career in letters. Even women like Jud i th Sargen t Murray , S a rah Wen twor th Mor ton , and o thers got into the ac t , and all found eager aud i-ence s for their work in per iod ica ls like Isa iah Thoma s ' s Massachusetts Mag-azine. A l though the conven t ions of the day requ ired anonym ity , the women u sed fem inine pen-name s , thus procla im ing the right of all women to op ine in print on pub l ic events . Actua l ly , the identity of the se women wr iters was genera l ly known ; their literary efforts added to the campa ign for a true real-ization of the pr incip le of equa l ity .

S im i lar ly , other writers pub l i shed utilitarian polit ical and pol i te—ae s the t-ically en joyab le— l i tera ture s imu l taneou s ly . Philip F reneau , for examp l e , succeeded first a s a writer of sat ires of the Br it ish ; after pub l i shing his Poems Written Chiefly during the Late War ( 1 7 8 6 ) he turned to new spape r work , ed it ing the New York Daily Advertiser and writing anti—Federalist Party e s say s , mak ing himsel f an enemy of A lexander Ham i l ton in the p roce s s . O ther au thor s , Annis Boud ino t S tock ton among them , cu t a different prof i le ,

I N T R O D U C T IO N / 1 7 7

pub l ishing in local per iod ica ls and new spaper s but a lso con tr ibu t ing signif-icantly to an extens ive manu scr ip t cu lture in which literary efforts were shared with a coter ie of l ike-minded peop le . Bu t , as the career of Freneau sugge s t s , desp i te the amoun t of belletristic writing extant from the late eigh-teenth century , the mo s t s ignif icant writings of the per iod are political , like the essays Ham i l ton , John Jay , and J am e s Mad i son wrote for New York news-papers in 1 7 8 7 and 1 7 8 8 in suppor t of the new federal cons t i tu t ion , collec-tively known a s The Federalist Papers. They provided an eloquen t de fen se of the framework of the repub l ic and rem ind us that in good mea su re the uniquene s s of the new Uni ted S ta te s of Amer i ca res ided in the language of the documen t s , the very words , on which the nat ion was ba sed . Toge ther with such sel f-conscious ly Amer ican works as Ben j am in Frank l in 's Autobi-ography and Hec tor S t . John de Crevecoeur ' s Letters from an American Far-mer, they mark the beg inning of a new sen se of nat iona l identity a s colonis ts from greatly different background s and of var ied nat iona l it ies now found reason s to call themselves " Ame r i can s . " This trans forma t ion was not easy . Washing ton Irving 's fictional charac ter Rip Van Wink le found the world rad-ically different when , finally awakened from his s lumbe r s , he tried to make sen se of what he had m i s sed , the Amer i can Revolut ion : " God knows , I'm not mysel f—I 'm somebody el se— tha t ' s me yonde r—no— tha t ' s somebody else got into my shoe s — I was myself last night , but I fell a s l eep on the moun ta in . . . and everything 's changed , and I'm changed , and I can 't tell what 's my name , or who I am ! "

Becau se neither the technolog ica l nor the econom i c in frastructure was yet in p lace to suppor t a nat iona l aud i ence , becau se peop l e lived in widely separa ted and poorly connec ted villages or on remo te f arms , none of these early Amer i can wr iters, includ ing such popu lar novelists as Su s ann a Rowson and Char l e s Brockden Brown , cou ld live by their pen s a lone . The cris is in Amer ican life cau sed by the Revolut ion had made art ists sel f-conscious abou t Amer i can sub jec t s , but it was Washing ton Irving who bes t learned how to exploit this nascen t se l f-con sc iou sne s s , who had the d ist inct ion of being the first Amer ican writer to live on the income produced by his pub l ica t ion s . H i s generat ion d iscovered ways of being Amer i can without comp rom i s ing their integrity, and they success fu l ly harne s sed the world of print to their amb i t ion to speak through the pro fess ion of au thorship .

P U R S U I N G H A P P I N E S S

When John Win throp de scr ibed his "mode l " for a Chr is t ian communi ty , he envis ioned a group of men and women work ing together for the common good , each of whom knew his or her p lace in the s tab le socia l s truc ture decreed by God . At all t imes , he sa id , " some mu s t be r ich , some poor , some high and em inen t in power and dignity ," others low and "in sub jec t ion . " Ideally , it was to be a communi ty of love , all made equa l by their fallen na ture and their concern for the sa lvat ion of their sou l s , but it was to be a s tab le communi ty . Bu t Pres ident John Adam s wi tnessed socia l mobility of a kind and to an extent that Win throp wou ld not have dreamed po s s ib le . As histo-r ians have observed , Eu ropean crit ics of Amer i ca in the eigh teen th and nine-teenth cen tur ies never unders tood that great socia l change was poss ib le

1 7 8 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 7 0 0 - 1 8 2 0

without socia l upheava l primarily becau se there was no feuda l hierarchy to overthrow . When C revecoeu r wan ted to d ist ingu ish Ame r i ca from Eu rope , it was the med ieva l ism of the latter that he wished to s tre s s . The visitor to Ame r i ca , he sa id , "views not the host i le cas t le , and the haugh ty man s i on , con t ras ted with the clay-built hut and m i serab le cab in , where catt le and men help to keep each other warm , and dwell in meanne s s , smoke and ind igence . "

O f course, in 1820 , many Ame r i can s were still not free . S om e of the Found ing Fa the r s , like Geo rge Washing ton and Thom a s Je f fer son , were s lave owners themselves . M en cou ld not vote unle s s they owned property ; women cou ld not vote at all. Wom en wgre^vards of their fa thers until mar-r iage , upon which their lega l identity was merged with their hu sband s , so that they cou ld not owh^ roperW l jr jeep any wagesThev m igh t earnTEdu-ca ted at home for dome s t i c du t i e s , young women were supposed" to be excluded from pub l ic , intellectua l life . Bu t , by_the e n d o f the eigh teen th century , a movemen t to educa te women like m e n— s o that they coTjTJprop-e j l ynm l ju e the i ryoung children vyTfrTpatriotic idea l s —had ga ined consiHer-ahle_strength . Every liteTary woman testifiecfin her own way to thel i se fu lne s s of all women in the pub l ic sphere . F ired by Enl igh tenmen t idea ls of reason and equa l ity , women like Jud i th Sargen t Murray and H ann ah Fo s ter began to speak and write on pub l ic sub jec t s and to ag itate for their rights as cit izens .

The cond it ion of Nat ive Ame r i can s con t inued to deter iorate throughou t the nine teen th century . Well unde r s tand ing their vu lnerabi l ity to colonia l expans ionis t dr ives, many eas tern tr ibes s ided with the Br it ish dur ing the Revolut ion . After the Brit ish de fea t , they were exposed bo th to white ven-geance and white greed . En t ire tr ibes were systemat ica l ly d i sp laced from their tradit iona l territories, pu shed ever farther and farther west . Never the-le s s , the s ame forces that earlier had unde rm ined chu rch author ity in New Eng land gradua l ly affected the Ame r i can s ' unde r s tand ing of wha t const i-tuted the good society . If, as Ru s se l Nye once pu t it, the two a s sump t i on s held to be true by mos t eigh teen th-cen tury Ame r i can s were " the perfect ibi l ity of man , and the pro spec t of his future prog re s s , " Amer i can cit izens had to ground tho se a s sump t i on s in the reality of their day-to-day rela t ions with o thers who se plight had not yet been touched by the con tag ion of liberty . Thu s much imag inat ive energy in the late eigh teen th and early nine teen th cen tur ies was expended in beg inning to correc t inst itut iona l and socia l in jus-t ices : the tyranny of monarchy , the tolerance of slavery , the m i su se of pris-on s , the p lace of women . Even a s they ag i ta ted for an ex tens ion of the pr incip les of liberty codif ied by the Revolut ionary genera t ion , few doub ted that with the app l ica t ion of intell igence the hum an lot cou ld be improved . Wr iters like F reneau , Frank l in , and C revecoeu r a rgued that , if it was not too la te , the tran sp lan ted Eu ropean m igh t learn some thing abou t fellowship and manne r s from " the nob le s avage s " rather than from rude white se t t lers , slave owners , and backwoods p ioneer s .

For many , Frank l in be s t repre sen t s the prom i se of the Enl igh tenmen t in Ame r i ca , even a s his long and fruitful life a lso test ified to the pitfalls that accompan ied an uncr it ica l adop t ion of pr incip les that en shr ined the individ-ua l 's conce rn s above tho se of the communi ty . Frank l in was sel f-educa ted , socia l , a s su red , a man of the wor ld , amb i t iou s and pub l ic-sp ir i ted , specu la-tive abou t the na ture of the universe , and in ma t ters of relig ion con ten t "to observe the ac tua l conduc t of humani ty rather than to deba te superna tura l

I N T R O D U C T IO N / 1 7 9

ma t ters that are unprovab le . " When Ezra St i les asked him abou t his religion , he sa id he believed in the "creator of the universe " but he doub ted the "divin-ity of J e su s . " He wou ld never be dogma t ic abou t it, however , b e c au s e— a s he wryly pu t i t—he expec ted soon "an opportunity of knowing the truth with less troub le . " Frank l in a lways pre sen t s himsel f as a man depend ing on first-hand exper ience , too worldly-wise to be caugh t off guard , and a lways m ind ing " the ma in ch ance , " as one charac ter in Tyler 's The Contrast coun se l s . Thi s a spec t of Frank l in 's pe r sona , however , belies ano ther s ide of him and of the eighteenth century : those idealist ic a s sump t i on s in which the great pub l ic documen t s of the Amer i can Revolut ion , especia l ly the Declara t ion of Inde-pendence , are grounded . G iven the representat ive na ture of Frank l in 's char-acter , it seem s right that of the documen t s mo s t closely a s soc ia ted with the format ion of the Amer i can repub l i c— the Declara t ion of Independence , the treaty of a l l iance with F rance , the Trea ty of Par is , and the Con s t i tu t i on— only he s igned all four .

The fact that Amer i can s in the last quarter of the eigh teen th century held that "certa in truths are self-evident , that all men are crea ted equa l , that they are endowed by their C rea to r with certa in una l ienab le R igh ts , that among these are L i fe , L iberty and the pursu i t of Happ i n e s s " was the resu lt of their read ing the Sco t t i sh phi lo sophers , part icu lar ly Franci s Hu tche son and Lord Karnes (Henry Home ) , who argued that all peop l e in all p lace s po s se s s a sen se common to a l l—a mora l sen se— tha t con trad ic ted the not ion of the m ind a s an emp ty vessel awa it ing exper ience . Thi s idea l ism paved the way for writers like Bryant , Eme r son , Tho reau , and Whi tman , bu t in the 1770 s its pre sence is found chiefly in polit ics and e thics . The a s su rance of a uni-versal sen se of right and wrong made poss ib le bo th the overthrow of tyrants and the restorat ion of order , and it a l lowed humank ind to make new earthly covenan ts , not , a s was the ca se with Bradford and Win throp , for the glory of God , bu t , a s Thom a s Je f ferson argued , for an individua l 's right to happ i-ne s s on ear th . How Ame r i can s u sed and abu sed that right in the service of self-interest wou ld become the theme of coun t l e s s writers after 1 8 2 0 , a s a market revolution permanen t ly enshr ined liberal pr incip les over tho se of the civic repub l icanism that had in formed the previous genera t ion 's behavior .

A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 7 0 0 - 1 8 2 0

T E X T S C O N T E X T S

1704—05 Sarah Kemhle Knight keeps Tlie

Private Journal of a journey from Boston to

New York (pub . 1825)

1718 French found New Or leans

1726—56 The "Great Awakening"

1728 William Byrd writes his History-of

the Dividing Line (pub . 1841)

1735 "The Speech of Moses Bon Saam "

published in London periodical

1741 Jonathan Edwards , Sinners in the 1741 Vitus Bering discovers Alaska

Hands of an Angry God

1755—63 French and Indian Wars

1 7 6 0 Briton Hammon , Narrative of the

Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing

Deliverance

1764 J ame s Grainger , Tlte Sugar Cane

1768 Sam son Occom , A Short Narrative

of My Life

1771—90 Ben jamin Franklin cont inues his

Autobiography (Part 1 pub . 1818)

1 7 7 3 Phillis Wheatlcy , Poems on Various 1 7 7 3 Boston Tea Party

Subjects

1 7 7 4 John Woolman , rYhe Journal of John

Woolnutn

I 7 7 4 - 8 3 John and Abigail Adams

exchange letters (pub . 1840, 1875)

1 775—83 War for American Independence

1 7 7 6 Thomas Paine, Common Sense 1776 Declaration of Independence

1 780 s Annis Boudinot Stockton publishes

poem s in magazines and newspapers

1 782 J. Hector St . John de Crevecoeur ,

Letters from an American Farmer

1783 Britain opens "Old Northwest" to

United States after Treaty of Paris ends

American Revolution

1 786 Philip Freneau , Poems

1787 Thomas Jefferson , Notes on the 1787 U .S . Const itut ion adopted

State of Virginia • Royal! Tyler, The

Contrast

1787—88 Tl\e Federalist papers

Boldface title indicate works in the anthology .

1 8 0

T E X T S C O N T E X T S

1 789 Olaudah Equ iano , The Interesting 1 789 George Washington elected first

Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano president

• Sarah Went worth Morton publishes her

first poem ; pub . My Mind and Its Thoughts

1823

1 7 9 0 Judith Sargent Murray, On the

Equality of the Sexes

1791 Susanna Rowson , Charlotte: A Tale 1791 Washington D.C . established as

of Truth U .S . capital

1798 Char les Brockden Brown, Wieland

180 3 United States buys Louis iana

Territory from France

1812— 14 Second war against Eng land

1819 Spain exchanges Florida for U .S .

assumpt ion of $5 million in claims

181

American Literature 1 8 2 0 -1 8 6 5

T H E L I T E R A R Y H E R I T A G E O F T H E Y O U N G R E P U B L I C

Educa ted Ame r i can s in the new Repub l ic were more fami l iar with G reek and Roman history , and Eu ropean history and l iterature , than with Amer i can writers of the colonia l and Revolut ionary eras . Many now-fam i l iar works of early Amer i can l iterature were not ac ce s s ib l e— some still unpub l i shed (Edward Taylor 's poem s ) , some ava i lab le only in incomp l e te texts ( Ben j am in Frank l in 's au tob iography ) , some extremely rare (Co t ton Ma ther ' s Magnalia Christi Americana, pr inted in London in 1 7 0 2 , first pr in ted in the Uni ted S ta te s in a sma l l edit ion at Hart ford in 1820 , and not genera l ly ava i lab le until 1 8 5 3 ) . Educa ted Amer i can boys and some girls learned G reek and Lat in l iterature in ch i ldhood—ep i c s , traged ies , comed i e s , pas tora l poem s , histo-ries, sa t ires . The Eng l i sh-language tradit ion that Ame r i can s shared , whe ther Nor therners or Sou the rne r s , was B r i tkk r jm s t i t i i t ed hy Spen se r V T j i e J ^ T i p

Oweene .__Shakespeare 's p l ay s^ and M idor i 's Paradise Lost a s wg lL_as eigh teen th-cen turv l iterature^ includinp ; e s say s by J o seph Add i son , R ichard S teele , S amue l John son , and t J f ive?~GoTdsm i th , and much now-neg lec ted poetry such a s Pope 's The Dunciad, J am e s Thom son ' s The Seasons, and Gold-sm ith 's The Deserted Village. De sp i te their polit ica l independence , A m e r i -

can s from Ma i ne to Georg ia (the sou the rnmo s t At lant ic s ta te until F lor ida was adm i t ted to the union in 1845) acknowledged much the s ame literary canon , a l though the inhab i tan ts (r t the reg ions sett led hv Pur i tans tended t n

che r i sh the d issen ter John Bunyan ' s Pilgrim's Progress more than literary-m inded Sou the rne r s , who se Colonial ance s tor s rn " " » n f t p n had hplnngpd

the Chu r ch of Eng land . Fur thermore , by the second quar ter of the nine teen th century , after the

war t ime d isrup t ions to trade were over, Ame r i can s had qu ick acce s s to con-temporary Brit ish l iterature and cr it icism . C ro s s ing the At lant ic on sa i l ing ships or s teame r s , any book or magazine cou ld be repub l i shed , a mon th or less after its appea rance in London , in the larger coas ta l c i t i e s — Bo s ton , New York, Philadelphia, and Cha r l e s ton . Vo lume s of poetry by the well-loved Sco t s poet Robert Bu rn s and by the Eng l ish Roman t i c s (Wordswor th , Co le -ridge , Byron , Moo re , Shelley , and Kea t s ) , then Tenny son , and a little later E l izabe th Barrett and Robert Browning were repr inted in the Uni ted S ta te s a lmos t a s soon a s they appea red in Eng land . The great Brit ish quarter ly reviews (which made a point of judg ing new literary works by fixed literary pr incip les , thereby expos ing their readers to literary cr it icism written from a theoret ica l s tance ) were repr inted even in such inland cit ies as A lbany and

4 2 5

4 2 6 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 6 5

C inc inna t i in the 1 8 4 0 s . The better new spape r s of the seacoa s t cit ies had corre sponden t s in Eu ropean cap i ta ls such a s London and Par is , and the po s t office init iated cheap ma i l ing rates for pr inted ma ter ia l . F rom the 1 8 4 0 s onward , the network of ra i lroads transpor ted book s over the Appa lach ian s to the M idwe s t . With good reason , Em i ly Dick inson in her home in Amhe r s t or William G i lmo re S imm s in his home ou t s ide Cha r l e s ton cou ld feel in touch with the latest London literary new s .

Gende r d i f ferences in literary knowledge were mo re obvious than reg iona l d i f ferences , for at leas t into the m idd le of the cen tury efforts were made to cen so r the read ing of girls and young women . One s imp le way was to deny them c la s s i ca l educa t ion a n d thereby pro tec t them J T om _ s e x u a H y frank writ-ings in G reek and La t in . S om e women writers in this per iod , notab ly Ca rol ine K irkJand and Ma rga re t Fu l ler , did receive in forma l class ica l educa t i on s through the a id of fathers or bro thers ; some men , includ ing the work ing-c lass Wa l t Whi tman and the well-born bu t impover ished He rman Melvil le , received little forma l educa t i on— F rede r i ck Doug la s s least of all . Wi thin each socia l c lass , in genera l , however , fewer girls we reed j j c^ te^ t l i a r^boy s , and care was taken to keep all young women away from Eng l i sh novels of th g j r e v i ou s cen tury tha t m igh t pollu te their m ind s . At thg_beg inning of the per iod , fiction was genera l ly held to in f lame the imag ina t ion and pa s s i on s of suscept ihle_young readers , especia l ly_young women . In fact , movemen t s for women ' s educa t ion often s tre s sed that ser iou s learning wou ld keep young girls away from novels . In her New Eng land novels Harr ie t Beeche r S towe enume ra ted the few book s that a young woman m igh t have in her room in the first decade s of the century : S amue l R i chardson ' s S ir Charles Grandison, abou t a model gen t l eman , was a l lowed , bu t not his seduc t ion novel Clarissa. Margare t Fu l ler 's conf l ict ing feelings toward S ir Wa l ter Sco t t sp rang from her father 's oppos i t ion to her read ing novels and ta les , and even in the next genera t ion Em i ly Dick in son read fiction aga in s t her father 's wi she s . Young men like Dick inson ' s bro ther were a lso warned of the evil e f fects novels m ight have on their mora l s , bu t with less urgency . Still , in this per iod even such a now- s tandard Br it ish work a s Jon a th an Swift 's Gulliver's Travels was ava i lab le only in expurga ted ed i t ions . Mora l oppos i t ion to fiction waned r>iiei^tJw»-dwM»4^ l .JWLjiAzac-nfH" dparFpyen at the ou tbreak of the Civil

War . O ther spec ie s of writ ing were though t to incu l ca te the highes t civic virtues .

F rom the early years of the repub l ic , many well-educa ted Ame r i can s believed that the new nat ion mu s t have its own nat iona l poem , and dozen s of poem s of great length and su rpa s s ing du l lne s s were pub l i shed . Joe l Bar low , one of the group of poe t s known a s " the Connec t i cu t Wi t s " in pos t-Revolu t ionary Amer i ca , in 1807 pub l i shed The Columhiad, mean t a s the ep ic poem of Co lumb ia , the Uni ted S ta te s , where he m igh t teach the love of nat iona l liberty and the dependence of good mora ls and good governmen t on repub-lican pr incip les . S igning his pre face in G rea t C ro s s ing , Ken tucky , in 1 8 2 7 , R i chard Emmon s n amed his four-volume Fredoniad; or, Independence Pre-served, an Epick Poem on the Late War of 1812 in honor of his Ame r i can mu s e , the Godde s s of F reedom . Th roughou t the first ha l f of the cen tury , crit ics ca l led for writers to celebra te the new coun try in poetry or p ro se , repea ted ly going so far a s to advise wou ld-be writers on potent ia l ly fruitful sub jec t s such as Amer i can Ind ian l egends , stor ies of colonia l ba t t les , and

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 2 7

celebra t ions of the Amer i can Revolut ion (a l though one re spec ted literary theory held that writers wou ld be better set t ing their works in a remo ter pas t , rather than a per iod so near to the pre sen t ) .

Ear ly ca l ls for the ex is tence of an Ame r i can l iterature were a ltered by the popu lar ity in the Uni ted S ta te s of Sir Wa l ter Sco t t , first a s the au thor of widely read poem s such a s The Lady of the Lake, then , decis ively , a s a his-torical novelist . After 1814 , when he pub l i shed Waverley anonymou s ly , Sco t t produced a new novel a lmo s t every year . Unt i l the secre t of his au thor ship was revea led in 1826 , the novels were a scr ibed to " The au thor of Waverley" or, by reviewers, to " the G rea t Unknown . " In the Uni ted S ta te s , where a new novel by the au thor of Waverley was a lmo s t a nat iona l event , literary cr it ics and asp ir ing novelists instant ly saw the appea l of Sco t t 's u se of histor ica l sett ings and his crea t ing imag ined scene s in which real histor ica l peop l e interm ing led with fictional charac ter s . Sco t t 's examp le not only made the novel a re spec tab le , even elevated , genre , it had much to do with red irect ing the literary efforts of amb i t iou s Ame r i can s from ep ic poetry toward pro se fiction. J am e s Fenimo re Coope r had a lready written a novel in im itat ion of J ane Au s ten , bu t his succe s s c am e in the histor ica l novel , after he im i ta ted Sco t t 's The Pirate in The Spy ( 1 8 2 1 ) , where Geo rge Washing ton was a char-acter . Lyd ia Mar ia Franci s (later Child) began to write Hobomok ( 1 8 2 4 ) after read ing J . G. Palfrey 's review of Yamoyden, "a metr ica l ta le in six can to s , after the manne r of S co t t " —me an ing the poetry of Sco t t . Bu t she had read the Sco t t novels as they appea red , and set Hobomok in seven teen th-cen tury Ma s s achu se t t s , her equ iva len t of Sco t t 's Sco t land of a previous century . Fol-lowing Sco t t and Coope r , Ca tha r ine Ma r ia Sedgwick in The Linwoods ( 1 8 3 5 ) brough t Revolut ionary heroe s , includ ing Washing ton , into her plot a long with fictional charac ter s . F rom ado le scence Haw tho rne was s teeped in Sco t t , and Melville 's read ing of Sco t t eme rged as late a s his 1876 ep ic poem , Clarel. In old age Wa l t Whi tman lovingly descr ibed a book he had cher i shed for fifty years , Sco t t 's poem s , comp l e te in one volume . Be fore the m id-cen tury , when every up-to-date Amer i can read Dicken s , every literate Ame r i can read Sco t t , and all appea l s for the crea t ion of a great Ame r i can l iterature were in fused with the knowledge that Sco t t had invented an infinitely adap tab l e genre of historical fiction.

Ano ther adap tab l e genre was the persona l travel book . The young Amer-ican Washing ton Irving had become fr iends with the great Wa l ter Sco t t through his Cervan tes- in f luenced parod ic History of New York ( 1 8 0 9 ) . Irving 's The Sketch Book ( 1 8 1 9 - 2 0 ) was a pecu l iar in term ing l ing of ta les and highly persona l e s say s in which the narrator , "Geo f frey C rayon , " was com-pared to an id iosyncrat ic land scape pa in ter who travels Eu rope ske tching "in nooks , and corners , and by-p laces , " but neg lec t ing "to pa in t S t . Peter 's , or the Co l i seum ; the ca scade of Terni , or the bay of N ap l e s . " Cap t iva ted by the genia l sensibility thu s d isp layed , Amer i can readers acknowledged Irving as the first great writer of the Uni ted S ta te s and cher i shed The Sketch Book for decade s . Henry T . Tucke rman ' s Italian Sketch Book ( 1 8 3 5 ) frankly im i ta ted it, and Na thaniel Parker Willis 's Pencillings by the Way (1835—36) was mod-eled on it. In tone and s truc ture He rman Melville 's Redburn ( 1 8 4 9 ) was deep ly indeb ted to it. Knowing that Willis had financed his travels in part by send ing letters home to new spaper s , the penni less young Bayard Taylor imi-tated his strategy in wha t be c ame Views A-foot ( 1 8 4 6 ) ; and Willis was a lso a

4 2 8 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 6 5

model for Ca rol ine K irk land 's Holidays Abroad ( 1 8 4 9 ) and Lou i se C lappe ' s Residence in the Mines (the " D am e Shir ley" letters, 1 8 5 4 ) . Melville 's first two book s , Typee ( 1 8 4 6 ) and Omoo ( 1 8 4 7 ) , purpor ted to be accu ra te accoun t s of exper iences in the Ma rque s a s and Tahi t i and were va lued pri-marily a s such . S im i lar ly , Ca rol ine K irk land 's two book s on frontier M ichi-gan , A New Home—Who'll Follow? ( 1 8 3 9 ) and Western Clearings ( 1 8 4 5 ) , were not only en terta ining, but were va lued a s usefu l sou rce s of genera l in format ion for potent ia l em igran t s . Bayard Taylor 's letters home from Ca l i -fornia in 1849 and 1 8 5 0 , col lec ted in Eldorado ( 1 8 5 0 ) , were in fused with buoyan t cha rm , bu t his pu rpo se was documen ta ry : to let Ea s te rne r s know what life was a lready like for the forty-niners and what they m igh t exper ience if they themselves sough t their for tunes in Ca l i fornia. At Wa lden Pond out-s ide Conco rd , Ma s s achu se t t s , Henry David Tho reau read Melville 's first book , Typee, very sober ly , a s a sou rce of an thropolog ica l in forma t ion abou t nat ives in the Sou th S e a Is lands . Then , in Walden, he turned the travel genre on its head , announc ing that he was writing a travel book himself , having traveled a good dea l in Conco rd . Exp lor ing himself , Tho reau wro te the clas-sic Amer i can travel book .

T H E S H I F T I N G C A N O N O F A M E R I C A N W R I T E R S

A pa in t ing popu lar dur ing the late nine teen th cen tury was Chr i s t ian Schu s -sele 's reverential Washington Irving and His Literary Friends at Sunnyside. Work ing in 1863 , four years after Irving 's dea th , Schu s se l e portrayed a numbe r of elegant ly clad no tab les in Irving 's sma l l study in his Go thic co t tage-cas t le on the Hud son River , north of New York C ity . Among them were several writers who se works appea r in this anthology : Irving himself, Na thanie l Haw tho rne , Henry Wad swor th Longfellow , Ra lph Wa ldo Emer-son , William Cu l l en Bryant , and J a m e s Fen imo re Coope r . In term ing led with these men were poe t s and novelists now se ldom read : William G i lmore S imm s , F i tz-Greene Ha l leck , Na thanie l Parker Willis, J am e s Kirke Pau l-d ing, John Pend le ton Kennedy , and Henry T . Tucke rman , a long with the histor ians William H . Presco t t and Geo rge Bancro f t . The pa in t ing was a p iou s hoax, for these gue s t s never a s semb l ed together at one t ime , at Sun-nyside or anywhere el se ; and while a few of tho se dep i c ted were indeed Irving 's fr iends , he barely knew some of them and never me t others at all. Yet the pa in t ing sugge s t s that Washing ton Irving, beloved by ordinary read-ers and by mo s t of his fellow wr iters, was the centra l Ame r i can literary fig-ure be tween 1809 (the year of his parody History of New York) and his dea th in 1 8 5 9 , ju s t be fore the Civil War . H e had demon s t ra ted in The Sketch Book (1819—20) that memo rab l e fiction—Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow—could be set in the villages or rural a reas of the Uni ted S ta te s (thereby init iat ing what be c ame backwood s humo r and later the loca l-color movemen t ) ; he a lso seemed to prove , by the book 's internat iona l succe s s , that an Amer i can writer cou ld win a Br it ish and Con t inen ta l aud i -ence .

Irving 's leg ion of im itators included severa l of the men in the pa in t ing; and among his fellow wr iters, Irving 's repu ta t ion was enhanced by his gen-erosity , as in his gallantly rel inqu ishing the sub jec t of the conque s t of Mex i co

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 2 9

to Prescott or in urg ing the pub l isher Geo rge P . Pu tnam to br ing ou t an Amer i can edit ion of the first book by the unknown He rman Melville . A l though J am e s Fenimo re Cooper ' s Leather-Stocking novels had a great vogue in Eu rope (where they be c ame a major sou rce of in forma t ion and m is in forma t ion abou t the Uni ted S ta te s ) , and his f ame a s a fiction writer rivaled Irving 's in this country , his in f luence on Amer i can wr iters never app roached the bread th of Irving 's. Irving and Coope r bo th spen t years abroad , Irving in Eng land and Spa in , Coope r in F rance . Ame r i can s never held Irving 's ab sence aga ins t him , for his winning the fr iendship of great foreigners ( such a s S ir Wa l ter Sco t t ) seemed to reflect glory on his country ; and for years he was honorab ly represen t ing his country , a s secretary of the legat ion in London , a s m inis ter to Spa in . Fu r the rmo re , he had a way of demon s tra t ing his Ame r i cani sm , a s in 1 8 3 2 , when on re turning from Eu rope he caugh t the pub l ic 's imag ina t ion with his a rduou s trip to presen t-day Ok lahoma . When Coope r re turned to the Uni ted S ta te s in 1833 after a lmo s t a decade abroad , he was appa l led at the spread of excess ively democ ra t i c a t t i tudes and lectured his fellow cit izens in A Letter to His Countrymen ( 1 8 3 4 ) and a sat irical novel , The Monikins ( 1 8 3 5 ) . Coope r embroi led himsel f in lawsu i ts , and pub l ic op inion turned aga ins t him a s pape r s , includ ing Hor-ace Greeley 's New York Tribune, waged a campa ign aga in s t him , literally de fam ing him a s a wou ld-be ar istocrat . Irving 's persona l popu lar ity was such that late in 1849 , when he was charged with p lag iar izing his b iography of Gold sm i th from two recent Br it ish b iographies , new spaper s from Ma ine to Lou i s iana denounced his accu se r without even exam in ing the evidence . No r did the in f luence of Ra lph Wa ldo Eme r son rival Irving 's, de sp i te his pro-foundly provocat ive effects on such writers as Margare t Fu l ler , Henry David Tho reau , Wa l t Whi tman , He rman Melvil le , and Em i ly Dick in son—e f fec t s that make modern literary histor ians see him a s the sem ina l writer of the century .

The Schu s se l e pa in t ing tells more than the artist cou ld have in tended abou t the fragile s ta tu s of literary repu ta t ion s , for while includ ing many writ-ers now all but forgotten , it excludes many o thers in this an thology . T o beg in with , it excludes all women , even those who had done subs tan t ia l work a lready , such a s Ca tha r ine Mar ia Sedgwick , Carol ine K irk land , Lydia Mar ia Child , Fanny Fern , Margare t Fu l ler , and mo s t f amou s of all , Harr iet Beeche r S towe (Em i ly Dick inson 's grea tes t burst of poe t ic crea t ion had a lready occurred by 1863 , but she rema ined an unpub l i shed poe t ) . The pa in t ing a l so excludes several ma l e writers who now seem among the mo s t impor tan t of the century : John G reenlea f Whitt ier (whose mi l itant abol i t ionism ru led him out of such good company ) , Edga r Allan Poe , Henry David Tho reau , Wa l t Whi tman , and He rman Melville . Fu r thermore , while the Marylander Ken-nedy was included , all other Sou the rne r s were excluded , among them writers such a s Augu s tu s Ba ldwin Longs tree t (whose impu l se to record d i sappear ing phase s of Georg ia life para l lels a recurren t impu l se in Sedgwick ' s writing) and Geo rge Washing ton Harr is (whose exuberan t pro se has drawn readers for a cen tury and a ha lf) . Schu s se le ' s arraying of literary no tab les offers a powerful lesson in the con s tan t shifting of literary repu ta t ions . Thi s edit ion of the anthology doe s not offer selec t ions from , for a few examp l e s , the Sou the rne r s Longs tree t and Harr is or from a northern writer of striking psycholog ica l fiction, E l izabeth Bars tow S todda rd . It a l so om i t s two of the

4 3 0 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 6 5

mo s t f amou s name s of the nine teen th century : the Ma s s a chu se t t s writers Oliver Wendel l Ho lme s and J am e s Russel l Lowell , neither of whom speak s powerfully to many readers at the pre sen t momen t . Yet a s taste change s they may be va lued aga in , and pe rhap s in new ways . Ho lme s , for in s tance , may be read for what he ca l led his "med i ca ted novel s " (rea l ist ic psycholog ica l fictions), pe rhap s in an era when at tent ion a lso shifts to S towe 's New Eng land novels , which some think have never been sufficiently pra i sed for their own mer its or acknowledged for their in f luence on later women ' s fic-t ion . It seem s safe to say that de sp i te his histor ica l impo r tance Lowell will not soon be given ninety pa ge s , as he was in some an tholog ies of the 1 9 6 0 s , but any writers om i t ted now may be ca l led back in later ed i t ions , a long with o thers never be fore included .

T H E S M A L L W O R L D O F A M E R I C A N W R I T E R S

The writers in Schu s se le ' s pa in t ing wou ld never have fitted into Irving 's snug room ; bu t the Amer i can literary wor ld was very sma l l indeed , so sma l l that many of the writers in this per iod knew each other , often int imately , or else knew mu ch abou t each other . At L itchf ield , Connec t i cu t , the young Geor-g ian Longs tree t greatly adm ired one of the m inis ter Lyman Beecher ' s daugh-ters (not Harr iet , then a sma l l chi ld) . O the r writers lived, if not in each other 's pocke t s , at least in each other 's hou se s , or boa rd inghou se s : Lemue l Shaw , from 1 8 3 0 to 1 8 6 0 chie f ju s t i ce of the Ma s s a chu se t t s Sup r eme Cou r t and He rman Melville 's father-in-law after 1 8 4 7 , for a t ime stayed in a Bo s ton boa rd inghou se run by Ra lph Wa ldo Eme r son ' s widowed mo ther ; the Long-fellows summe red in the 1 8 4 0 s at the P ittsfield boa rd inghou se run by Mel-ville 's cou s in , a hou se in which Melville had stayed in his early teen s . Lyd ia Ma r ia Child 's hu sband owed money to Melville 's Bo s ton grand fa ther ; and the execu tor of the e s ta te , Lemue l Shaw , ca l led to collect the debt , much to M r s . Child 's chagr in . In New York , the Sedgwick fami ly (which inc luded Ca tha r ine Mar ia Sedgwick part of the year) was on in t ima te terms with ano ther nat ive of wes tern Ma s s a chu se t t s , William Cu l l en Bryan t ; and J am e s Fenimo re Coope r borrowed money from a Sedgwick . The guard ian of the orphaned Lou i se Ame l ia Sm i th (later " D a m e Shir ley") was a c la s sma te of Em i ly Dick inson ' s father . In the 1 8 4 0 s the new spape r ed itor Bryant some -t imes took wa lks with ano ther editor , young Wa l t Whi tman . In P ittsfield in the early 1 8 5 0 s Melville and his family exchanged visits with Cha r l e s and E l izabe th Sedgwick of Lenox, in who se hou se Ca tha r ine Ma r ia Sedgwick spen t part of the year ; until his dea th Cha r l e s was the clerk of cour t when Judge Shaw held his se s s ion in Lenox each Sep tembe r ; and E l izabe th Sedg-wick had taugh t Melville 's older s ister He len at her school . In P ittsfield and Lenox, Haw thorne and Melville pa id each other overnight vis its; in Conco rd the Haw tho rne s rented the O ld M an s e , the Eme r son ance s tra l home , and later bough t a hou se there from the educa to r B ron son A lcott and made it f amou s as the Way s ide ; in Conco rd the Eme r son s welcomed many gue s t s , includ ing Margare t Fu l ler (who a l so vis ited with the Haw tho rne s ) ; and when Eme r son was away , Tho reau , a nat ive of Conco rd , some t ime s stayed in the hou se to help M r s . Eme r son . Eme r son repea ted ly re scued B ron son A lcott

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 3 1

from financial d isaster , and Bronson ' s daugh ter Lou i sa May A lcott took les-son s in Eme r son ' s hou se (and revered her na ture gu ide , Tho reau ) . Fanny Fern 's brother , Na thanie l Parker Willis, whom she sat irica l ly dep i c ted a s "Hyac in th " in Ruth Hall, was a close friend of Melville for a t ime ; in the winter of 1 8 4 7 , Willis and Melville 's friend , editor Evert A. Duyck inck , took the train up to Fo rdham together to a t tend the funera l of V irg inia Poe , the wife of Edga r Poe , who , like Melville and Haw tho rne , was one of Duyck inck 's au thors in his Wiley & Pu tnam ser ies , L ibrary of Amer i can Book s . The pop-u lar Manha t tan ho s te s s Anne Lynch a s s igned the young travel writer Bayard Taylor to write a va lent ine for a slightly older travel writer, He rman Melvil le , in 1 8 4 8 ; and three years later , apparen t ly with ma tchmak i ng in m ind , brough t together Taylor 's in t ima te friend R. H . S todda rd and E l izabe th Bar-stow , a d is tan t relative of Haw tho rne . Melville took Carol ine K irk land 's Hol-idays Abroad on shipboard with him in 1 8 4 9 , and the next year she was delighted with his White-Jacket; they probab ly were acqua in ted . Eme r son shared his en thu s ia sm for Leaves of Grass with B ron son A lcott and Henry David Tho reau , who , dur ing a stay in New York , took the Brook lyn ferry to call on Whi tman . Lyd ia Mar ia Chi ld and John G reenlea f Whitt ier were long-t ime fr iends , ve terans in the great c au se of abolit ion . On a visit to Washing -ton after the Civil Wa r had broken ou t , the still reclus ive , and a i l ing, Haw thorne ser ious ly con s idered mak ing the hazardou s trip to Wheel ing to mee t the extraordinary new con tr ibu tor to the Atlantic Monthly, Rebecca Hard ing ; later he welcomed her at Way s ide .

Many of the ma l e writers of this per iod c am e toge ther casua l ly for d ining and dr ink ing, the hosp ita l ity at Evert Duyck inck 's hou se in New York being f amou s , open to Sou the rne r s like William G i lmo re S imm s as well a s New Yorkers like Melville and Bo s tonian s like the elder R i chard Henry D an a , the father of the au thor of the popu la r Two Years before the Mast. O f the clubs formed by ma l e writers, art ists , and other no tab le s , the two mo s t memo rab l e are the Bread and Chee s e C lub , which Coope r organized in 1824 in the back room of his pub l isher 's Manha t tan book s tore , and the S a tu rday C lub , a con-vivial Bo s ton group formed in 1856 and especia l ly a s socia ted with the Atlan-tic Monthly and the pub l i shing hou se of T i cknor and F ie lds . Membe r s of the Bread and Chee s e C lub inc luded the poet Will iam Cu l l en Bryant , S amue l F. B. Mo r se (the pa in ter who later invented the telegraph ) , the poe t Fitz-G reene Ha l leck , and Thom a s Co le (the Eng l ish-born pa in ter of the Amer i can land scape ) . Eme r son was among the membe r s of the S a tu rday C lub , a long with J am e s Russel l Lowell , Henry Wadswor th Longfel low , Oliver Wendel l Ho lme s , and the his tor ians John Lo throp Mo t ley and William H . Pre sco t t ; Na thanie l Haw thorne a t tended some mee t ings . A long with mo re forma l organiza t ions , informa l a s socia t ion s f lour ished . In 1836 a sma l l group of Bo s ton-based Uni tar ian s began to mee t to study Ge rman philosophy ; at first s imp ly ca l led Hedge ' s club , from the organizer , Freder ic Hedge , the group pa s sed into literary history a s the " T ran scenden ta l C lub . " Margare t Fu l ler conduc ted a ser ies of "conver sa t ion s " in the late 1 8 3 0 s and early 1 8 4 0 s that foreshadowed many women ' s clubs of the fu ture . In the late 1 8 5 0 s a Bohe-m ian group of new spaper and theater peop l e and writers drank toge ther at P f a f f s sa loon on Broadway above B leecker S tree t ; for a t ime Whi tman was a fixture there .

4 3 2 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 6 5

T H E S M A L L — B U T E X P A N D I N G — C O U N T R Y

Su ch int imacy was inevitable in a coun try that had only a few literary and pub l i shing cen ter s , a lmo s t all of them a long the At lant ic seaboa rd . Desp i te the acqu is i t ion of the Lou i s iana Terr itory from F rance in 1803 and the vast sou thwe s t from Mex i co in 1 8 4 8 , mo s t of the writers we still read lived all their lives in the original thirteen s ta te s , except for trips abroad , and their pract ica l exper ience was of a compac t country : in 1 8 4 0 the "nor thwe s tern " s ta tes were those covered by the Nor thwe s t O rd inance of 1787 (Ohio , Indi-ana , Illinois, and M i ch igan ; Wi scon s in was still a territory), while the " sou th-we s tern " humo r writers such a s Geo rge Washing ton Harr is , Thom a s B ang s Tho rpe , and J ohn son J one s Hoope r wrote in the reg ion bounded by Geo rg ia , Lou i s iana , A rkan sa s , and Tenne s see .

Improvemen t s in transpor ta t ion were shr ink ing the coun try—even while territorial ga ins were enlarg ing it. When Irving went from Manha t tan to A lbany in 1 8 0 0 , s teamboa t s had not yet been inven ted ; the Hud son voyage was slow and dange rou s , and in 1803 the wagon s of Irving 's C anada -bound party barely made it through the bogs beyond U t i ca . The Er ie C ana l , com-p leted in 1 8 2 5 , changed things : in the 1 8 3 0 s and 1 8 4 0 s Haw tho rne , Melville , and Fu l ler took the cana l boa t s in safety , su f fer ing only from crowded and stuffy s leep ing cond i t ions . When Irving wen t bu f fa lo hun t ing in Indian territory (now Ok lahoma ) in 1 8 3 2 , he left the s teamboa t at S t . Lou i s and went on hor seback , camp i ng out at night except when his party reached one of the line of m i s s ion s built to a c commod a t e whites who were Chr is t ianizing the P la ins Ind ians . Around the first of Oc tobe r 1 8 3 2 , Lyman Beeche r of Bo s ton , having accep ted the pre s idency of L ane Theolog i ca l Sem -inary in C inc inna t i , set out in at least one s tagecoach with severa l membe r s of his family , includ ing Harr iet , later the au tho r of Uncle Tom's Cabin. They s topped in New York C ity and Philadelphia (apparent ly lead ing a milk cow ) , then had to leave the s tagecoach for wagon s when they reached the Alle-ghenie s , west of Harr isburg. In tend ing to take a s teamboa t from Wheel ing (then in V irg inia), they delayed bec au se of cholera in C inc inna t i and ulti-mately took a s tagecoach , arriving in m id-November . By the 1 8 4 0 s ra i lroads had rep laced s ta gecoache s be tween many eas tern towns , a l though to get to New O r l ean s in 1848 Whi tman had to change from ra i lroad to s tagecoach to s teamboa t . De sp i te frequen t train wrecks , s teamboa t exp los ions , and At lant ic shipwrecks , by the 1850 s travel be tween major cities had ce a sed to be the hazardou s adven ture it had been at the beg inning of the per iod .

The except ion was travel to and from S an F ranc i sco . Tha t old Spani sh-Mex i can port be c ame an a lmo s t ins tan t me tropol is in the Go ld Ru sh of 1849 , when thou s and s of gold seekers and o thers pou red in from all over the wor ld . Ame r i can s and Eu ropean s often took the long and per i lous voyage a round C ap e Horn , a s Lou i se C lappe ( "Dame Shir ley") and her doc to r -hu sband did in 1849—50. Mu ch faster was the route by ship from an eas tern port to Cha g re s , then acro s s the i s thmu s by ho r seback and canoe to P an am a C ity ( tough , young Bayard Taylor made it in five days in 1 8 5 0 ) , and by ship to S an F ranc i sco . Thou s and s set off for Ca l i fornia from M i s sou r i or Texas in wagon s , on hor seback , or s imp ly on foot , wa lk ing be s ide wa gon s , cro s s ing the centra l p la ins , the Rocky Moun ta i n s , and wes tern de ser t s .

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 3 3

The eas tern c i t i e s —New York, Philadelphia, and Bo s ton— though the largest in the na t ion , were tiny in compar i son to their mode rn s ize . The s ite of Brook F a rm , now long s ince ab sorbed by Bo s ton , was cho sen bec au se it was nine m i les remo te from the S ta te Hou se and two m i les away from the neares t farm . The popu la t ion of New York C ity at the start o f the 1840 s was only a third of a million (abou t 5 percen t of its curren t size) and was con-cen tra ted in lower Manha t tan : Union Squa re was the nor thern edge of town . Ho race Greeley , the editor of the New York Tribune, e scaped the bus t le of the city by living on a ten-acre farm up the Eas t River on Tur t l e Bay , where the Ea s t Fifties are now ; there he and his wife provided a bucol ic retreat for Margare t Fu l ler when she was his literary critic and me tropoli tan reporter . In 1853 the Crysta l Pa lace , an expos it ion of arts , crafts , and sci-ence s crea ted in imitat ion of the great Crysta l Pa lace at the London Wor ld 's Fa ir of 1 8 5 1 , fa i led— largely becau se it was too far out of town , up west of the Cro ton Wa ter Reservoir (which had made pure running water ava i lab le for a decade , a lready ) . The reservoir was on the spo t where the New York Pub l ic L ibrary now s tands , at Forty-second S tree t and Fifth Avenue , and the Crysta l Pa lace was on the site of the modern Bryant Park (for decade s an ironic p lace to be named for the na ture poe t , it has been rec la imed for safe pub l ic en joymen t ) .

The writers in this per iod tended to look eas t for their aud i e n c e s — some of the writers, in earlier decade s , to Eng land , all of them to the pub l i shing cen ters on the eas t coas t , even tho se who had lived in what was ca l led the west (K irk land in M i ch igan , S towe in Ohio ) . Severa l of the writers cou ld remembe r clearly when news c ame in 1803 that Pres iden t Je f ferson had bough t an eno rmou s territory, imposs ib le to visua l ize ; all of them knew that acqu ir ing Oregon m ight have co s t a third war with G rea t Brita in in the m id-1840 s ; and all of them lived through the acqu is i t ion of the Sou thwe s t , includ ing Ca l i fornia, in 1848 . In varying ways , many of the writers were affected by the expans ion wes tward . Coope r propel led his aged hero Lea ther-s tock ing acro s s the M iss iss ipp i in The Prairie ( 1 8 2 7 ) before Irving ou td id Coope r by going acro s s the M iss iss ipp i himself . Th rough mu ch of her child-hood , Harr iet Presco t t 's father was away , trying to make his fortune in O regon . In The Oregon Trail, a ser ies of art icles in the New York Knicker-bocker ( 1 8 4 7 ) , Franci s Parkman recoun ted his journey wes tward a s far a s Wyom ing ; in 1849 , he cap ita l ized on the acqu is i t ion of the Sou thwe s t by pub l ishing it a s a book with an expanded , m i s lead ing title , The California and Oregon Trail. Melvil le , who had traveled a s far west a s the M i s s i s s ipp i before going wha l ing and who had seen nat ive peop l e s m i s trea ted in the Pacific is lands and a long the Pacific coas t of Sou th Ame r i ca , reac ted hostilely to Parkman 's d isda in for the Amer i can Ind ians he encoun te red : "Who can swear that among the naked Br it ish barbar ians sent to Rome to be s tared at more than 1500 years ago , the ance s tor of B acon m ight not have been found? —Why , among the very Thug s of India, or the b loody Dyaks of Bor-neo , exists the germ of all that is intellectua l ly elevated and grand . We are all of u s —Ang l o -S axon s , Dyaks and Ind ian s — sp rung from one head and made in one ima ge . " F rom northern Ca l i fornia the young Bayard Taylor sen t home reports on the Gold Ru sh to the New York Tribune and pub l i shed them early in 1850 as Eldorado. Apparent ly not trying to find an eas tern out let , Lou i se C lappe ( "Dame Shir ley") pub l i shed her letters abou t her

4 3 4 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 6 5

" Re s idence in the M i n e s " ( 1 8 5 1 - 5 2 ) only belatedly , in 1854 , in a friend 's short-lived S an F ranc i sco literary magaz ine , The Pioneer; con sequen t ly , her f ame was never truly nat iona l in her l ifet ime . Longfel low relied on book s for his descr ip t ions of the M i s s i s s ipp i reg ion in Evangeline ( 1 8 4 7 ) , bu t if the E a s t had cr ied ou t to be pu t into l iterature early in the century , now the M i s s i s s ipp i cr ied out to be pu t into l iterature by someone who knew it. At m id-cen tury the boy-printer S amue l C l emen s in Hanniba l , M i s sou r i , on the great river, set into type many stor ies by writers of the old Sou thwe s t . When the Civil Wa r c am e , C l emen s found reason for going west to Nevada and Ca l i fornia, then to Hawa i i ; and in 1 8 7 2 he brough t a vers ion of his adven-tures into print in the Ea s t , in Har t ford , Connec t i cu t , a s Roughing It. Soon , in 1 8 7 5 , he wou ld write the sp lend id "O ld T ime s on the M i s s i s s ipp i " for the Atlantic Monthly and at least one great book set on the river, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ( 1 8 8 4 ) .

T H E E C O N O M I C S O F A M E R I C A N L E T T E R S

Geography and mode s of transpor ta t ion bore directly on pub l i shing proce-dure s in the Uni ted S ta te s of this per iod . For a long t ime writers who wan ted to pub l ish a book carr ied the manu sc r ip t to a loca l pr inter , pa id job rates to have it pr in ted and bound , and made their own a rrangemen t s for d istr ibut ion and sa le s . Longfel low worked in this fashion with a firm in Brun swick , Ma i ne , when he pr inted his trans la t ion of Elements of French Grammar and o ther textbooks dur ing his first years as a teacher . Over the years , however , true pub l i shing cen ter s developed in the ma jor seapor t s that cou ld receive the latest Br it ish book s by the fas tes t ships and , hastily repr int ing them , d istr ibute them inland by river traffic a s well a s in coas ta l cit ies . After 1 8 2 0 the lead ing pub l i shing towns were New York and Phi ladelphia , with the Er ie C ana l soon giving New York an advan tage in the Ohio trade . Bo s ton rema ined only a provincia l pub l i shing cen ter until after 1 8 5 0 , when pub l ish-ers realized the va lue of the decade-old ra i lroad connec t ion s to the We s t . ( Shipped by sea , cop ie s of Melville 's early book s reached New O r l ean s two weeks or so after pub l ica t ion in New York .) De sp i te the aggress ive me rchan-d is ing technique s of a few firms, the crea t ion of a nat iona l book-buying mar-ket for l iterature , especia l ly Ame r i can l iterature , was long delayed .

The prob lem was that the econom i c in teres ts of Ame r i can pub l isher-booksel lers were ant ithet ica l to the in teres ts of Ame r i can wr iters . A na t iona l copyr ight law b e c am e effective in the Uni ted S ta te s in 1 7 9 0 , bu t it was 1891 be fore Ame r i can writers had internat iona l pro tec t ion and foreign writers received pro tec t ion in the Uni ted S ta te s . Th rough a lmo s t all the century , Ame r i can pr inters rout inely p ira ted Eng l ish wr iters , paying no thing to S ir Wa l ter Sco t t or Cha r l e s Dicken s or later writers for their novels , which were ru shed into print and sold very cheap ly in New York , Phi ladelphia , and other cit ies . Ame r i can readers benef ited from the s i tua t ion , for they cou ld buy the be s t Br it ish and Con t inen ta l wr it ings cheap ly ; bu t Ame r i can writers su f fered , bec au se if they were to receive roya lt ies, their book s had to be pr i ced above the pr ices charged for works of the mo s t f amou s Br it ish wr iters . Ame r i can pub l i sher s were willing to carry a few nat ive novelists and poe t s as pres t ige i tems for a while , but they were bu s ine s speop l e , not phi lan throp is t s .

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 3 5

To compound the prob lem , Irving 's apparen t conque s t of the Br it ish pub-l ishing sy s tem , by which he received large sum s for The Ske tch Book and succeed ing volume s , proved delusory . Coope r and o thers followed in Irving 's track for a t ime and were pa id by ma gnan imou s Br it ish pub l i sher s under a system whereby works first pr inted in G rea t Br ita in were p re sumed to hold a Br it ish copyr ight . Bu t this prac t ice was ru led illegal by a Br it ish judge in 1849 , and the Br it ish marke t dr ied up for Amer i can writers.

Th roughou t this per iod , like our own , mak ing a ser ious Ame r i can contri-bu t ion to the l iterature of the world was no gua ran tee at all of mone tary rewards . Excep t for the few au thors of best-sellers like S towe and , later, A lcott (both pub l i shing after m id-cen tury ) , the Uni ted S ta te s was not a coun-try in which one cou ld make a living by writing fiction and poetry : Fanny Fern 's financial tr iumph (a lso after 1850) was as a columni s t ; and a l though he pub l i shed poetry and fiction, Bayard Taylor 's ma in income c am e from his new spaper art icles written home from exotic loca t ions (then col lec ted into travel book s ) and , later , from his very popu lar lec tures . Se r iou s au thors cou ld not a lways find pub l ishers for their work . Unlike mo s t o ther ma l e wr iters, Irving cou ld always find a pub l isher , and in 1849 his career was revived by Pu tnam ' s lavish promo t ion of his life of Oliver Go ld sm i th ; Coope r cou ld a lso get his new book s pub l i shed , and the reissue of some of his ear l ier succe s se s restored some of his popu lar ity before his dea th late in 1 8 5 1 . O the r writers for per iods of t ime be c ame ed itors of magaz ine s or new spape r s (there were dozens of new spaper s in Manha t tan in the 1 8 4 0 s ) , where they cou ld pub l ish themselves . The se ed itors included Poe , Longs tree t , Harr is , Tho rpe , John son J one s Hoope r of A labama , Lowell , and other no tab le examp l e s : Fu l ler , who for severa l years reported for the New York Tribune at home and from Eu rope ; Whi tman , who for much of the 1 8 4 0 s and 1850 s was free to edi-torialize in one Brooklyn or Manha t tan new spaper or ano ther ; Whitt ier , who for more than two decade s before the Civil Wa r was corre spond ing ed itor of the Washing ton National Era; Child , who ed ited the New York Anti-Slavery Standard and wrote letters to the Bo s ton Courier; K irk land , who ed i ted the New York Union and wrote for other magaz ine s ; and , mo s t con sp i cuou s , Bryant , long-t ime owner of the New York Evening Post. Fanny Fern 's bro ther Na thaniel Willis Parker was a celebrity writer of poetry , fict ion , and travel ske tche s ; but he earned his living dur ing this per iod a s the ed itor of the New York Home Journal. Whi tman was his own pub l i sher for mo s t ed it ions of Leaves of Grass and filled ma i l orders himself , as Tho reau a lso did when an occas iona l reques t c am e for one of the seven hundred cop ie s of his first book , which the pub l isher had re turned to him . At crucia l momen t s in his career , Melville felt con s tra ined not to write what he wan ted to write , a s when he sacr if iced his literary a sp ira t ions after the fa i lure of Mardi and wrote Redburn and White-Jacket, which he regarded a s mere drudgery ; and at o ther t imes he was "preven ted from pub l i shing" works he had comp l e ted , includ ing The Isle of the Cross, which he probab ly des troyed . Ironically , the writer freest to pu r sue literary grea tne s s in this per iod was probab ly Em i ly Dick in son , who se "letter to the wor ld" rema ined unma i led dur ing her l ifet ime . Fanny Fern broke all the ru les by being pa id lavishly for her co lumn s in the New York Ledger.

4 3 6 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 6 5

•

C O N F O R M I T Y , M A T E R I A L I S M , A N D T H E E C O N O M Y

The eccentr icity of Ame r i can s , especia l ly in rural areas and sma l ler towns , was no tor ious among visitors from abroad and was recorded in some of its a spec t s by diverse wr iters. In Stowe 's New Eng land novels of the late 1850s and early 1 8 6 0 s , there is a gallery of portra its of menta l ly angu lar or gnar led charac ter s . In Amher s t , Em i ly Dick inson ou t -Tho reaued Tho reau in her res-olu te privacy , id iosyncracies , and individuality . Bu t she cou ld be under s tood in relat ion to real and fictional charac ter s . The night her corre sponden t Tho-ma s Wen twor th H igg inson met her in 1870 , he strove to convey her char-ac ter in a letter to his wife : "if you had read Mr s . S toddard ' s novels you cou ld under s tand a hou se where each membe r runs his or her own selves . "

De sp i te such powerful ind ividua l ists , it seemed to some of the writers that Ame r i can s , even while delud ing themselve s that they were the mos t self-reliant popu lace in the world , were systemat ica l ly selling ou t their individ-ua l it ies . Eme r son sounded the a larm : "Socie ty everywhere is in consp iracy aga ins t the manhood of every one of its membe r s . Socie ty is a join t-s tock company which the membe r s agree for the be t ter secu r ing of his bread to each shareholder , to surrender the liberty and cu l ture of the eater . The virtue in mos t reques t is con form i ty . " In Tlw Celestial Railroad Haw tho rne satiri-cally descr ibed the cond it ion at the Vanity Fa ir of mode rn Ame r i ca , where there was a " spec ie s of mach ine for the wholesa le manu f ac tu re of individual mora l ity . " He went on : "This excellent resu lt is effected by socie t ies for all manne r of virtuous pu rpo se s ; with which a man has merely to connec t him-self, throwing, as it were , his quo ta of virtue into the c ommon s tock ; and the pres iden t and d irectors will take care that the aggrega te amoun t be well app l i ed . " Tho reau repeated ly sat irized Ame r i ca as a nat ion of joiners that tried to force every newcome r "to belong to their de spe ra te odd-fellow soci-ety": to Tho reau , membe r s of the Odd Fellows and other socia l organizat ions were s imp ly not odd enough , not individual enough .

Bu t none of the writers found anything com i ca l in the whole sa le loss of Yankee individua l ism a s both men and women de ser ted wornou t farms for factor ies , where many began to feel what Eme r son ca l led " the d isproport ion be tween their facu lt ies and the work offered them . " Far too often , the search for a better life had degenera ted into a des ire to po s se s s fac tory-made ob jec t s . " Things are in the s add l e , " Eme r son sa id sweep ing ly , " and ride mank ind . " In elabora t ion of that accu sa t i on , Tho reau wrote Walden a s a treat ise on expand ing the spiritua l life by s impl ifying ma ter ia l wan t s . In form ing Tho-reau 's ou t rage at the ma ter ia l ism of his t ime was the bitter knowledge that even the mo s t impover ished were being led to was te their money (and , there fore , their lives) on trumpery . In a vocabu lary echo ing Ben j am in Frank-lin, he condemned the emerg ing con sume r economy that was devo ted , even in the infancy of advert is ing, to the crea t ion of "artificial w an t s " for things that were unneeded or outright pernic iou s . And to coun te r the loss of an archetypa l Yankee virtue , he made himsel f into a jack-o f-a l l- trades and s trong mas ter of one , the art of writing.

The d i f ference in the socia l s ta tu s (and the earning power) of men and women did not pene tra te the con sc iou sne s s of all wr iters , even all women wr iters, but Child produced the comp rehen s i ve , p ioneer ing History of the

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 3 7

Condition of Women, in Various Ages and Nations, and after her own harsh exper ience at trying to suppor t herself and her daugh ter s by the conven t iona l fem inine skill of sewing, Fanny Fern m i s sed no chance to expo se the cruel myth that any indus tr ious woman cou ld earn a decen t living. After his own failure to earn a living in Amer i ca was painfully obvious to him , Melville med i ta ted on the exp loitat ion of fema l e mi l lworkers in The Tartarus of Maids. Doug las s portrayed himsel f as never being without hope , a l though a s lave ; Hard ing portrayed wage-s laves in the iron mi l ls, ma l e and fema l e , a s utterly without reasonab l e hope . In strangely different ways the writers to speak out mos t pro found ly abou t the emerg ing Amer i can econom i c sys tem were Chi ld , S towe , Fern , Tho reau , Doug la s s , Melville , Whi tman , and Davis .

O R T H O D O X R E L I G I O N A N D T R A N S C E N D E N T A L I S M

All the major writers found themselves at odds with the dom inan t religion of their t ime , a Pro tes tan t Chr ist ianity that exerted prac t ica l control over what cou ld be pr inted in book s and magaz ine s . Sedgwick , a Uni tar ian , a s befitted her high socia l s ta tu s , was appa l led at the un seem l ine s s of back-woods Me thod i s t revivals; more often , wr iters, even nom ina l Uni tar ian s , were appa l led at the co ldne s s of chu rche s , not the wildness . Thi s chu rch , Eme r son sa id , ac ted " a s if God were dead . " Whi tman , bred a s a Quaker , was even more bitter toward all Pro tes tan t chu rche s : " The chu rche s are one vast lie ; the peop l e do not believe them , and they do not believe them se lve s . " Still , the writers all c am e from Pro tes tan t backg round s in which Ca lv ini sm was more or less wa tered down (less so in the ca se s of Melville and Dick-in son ) , and they knew their theology . Eme r son , Tho reau , and Chi ld (who pub l ished a history of all relig ions in 1 8 5 1 ) , regu lar ly tried to p lace Pro tes tan t Chr ist ianity in relat ion to other relig ions, while Melville tended to judg e con temporary Chr ist ianity by the ab solu te s tandard s of the New Te s tamen t . In The Celestial Railroad Haw thorne memorab ly satirized the Amer i can urge to be progress ive and liberal in theology as well as in polit ics , and Melville ex tended the sat ire throughou t an ent ire book , The Confidence-Man.

Awarene s s of the fact of relig ious ecs tasy was not at i s sue . Eme r son , for ins tance , showed in The Over-Soul a clinica l sen se of the var iet ies of relig ious exper ience , the "varying forms of that shudde r of awe and delight with which the individual sou l a lways m ing les with the universa l sou l . " S im i lar ly , Tho-reau acknowledged the validity of the " second birth and pecu l iar relig ious exper ience " ava i lab le to the "solitary hired man on a farm in the outsk irts of Conco rd " but felt that any relig ious denom ina t ion in Amer i ca wou ld pervert that mystical exper ience into some thing ava i lable only under its au sp i c e s and in acco rdance with its part icu lar doc tr ines . L ike Tho reau , Whi tman saw all relig ious ecs tasy as equa l ly valid and c am e forth in Song o /My se l /ou tb idd ing " the old cau t iou s huck s te r s " like Jehovah , Krono s , Zeu s , and He rcu l e s , gods who held too low an e s t ima te of the va lue of men and women . Among these writers Melville was a lone in his angu i shing convict ion that true Chr ist ianity was imprac t icab le . Melville a l so felt the bruta l power of the Ca lvinist ic Jeho-vah with specia l keenne s s : human beings were "god-bu l l ied" even a s the hull of the Pequod was in Moby-Dick, and the bes t way peop l e had of demon-strat ing their own divinity lay in defying the omnipo ten t tyrant . T o Dick inson

4 3 8 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 6 5

a lso , God was often a bu l ly—a "Mas t i f f , " whom subservience m igh t , or m ight not , appea se . In a ser ies of novels Harr iet Beeche r S towe compell ing ly descr ibed the way rigid Ca lv ini sm cou ld cr ipp le young m inds .

T ran scenden ta l i sm in the late 1 8 3 0 s and early 1 8 4 0 s was treated in mo s t ma in s t ream new spaper s and magaz ine s as some thing be tween a nat iona l laughings tock and a clear men a ce to organized relig ion . The running jour-na l ist ic joke , which Haw thorne echoed in The Celestial Railroad, was that no one cou ld define the term , other than that it was highfa lut in , foreign , and obscurely dange rou s . The conservat ive Chr is t ian view is well repre sen ted by a pa s s a ge that appeared in S towe 's new spaper ser ia l izat ion of Uncle Tom's Cabin ( 1 8 5 1 ) but was om i t ted from the book vers ion , a sarcas t ic ind ic tmen t of the reader who might find it hard to believe that Tom cou ld be stirred by a pa s s a ge in the B ib le : "I men t ion this, of cou r se , philosophic friend , a s a psycholog ica l phenomenon . Very likely it wou ld do no such a thing for you , becau se you are an enligh tened man , and have out-grown the old myths of pas t cen tur ie s . Bu t then you have Eme r son ' s E s s ay s and Car lyle 's M is-cel lanies , and other produc t ion s of the latter day , su i ted to your advanced deve lopmen t . " Su ch early observers under s tood well enough that T ran scen-den ta l i sm was more pan theis t ic than Chr i s t ian . The "de f iant P an the i sm " infus ing Thoreau ' s shorter p ieces helped keep them out of the magaz ine s , and J am e s Russel l Lowell for the Atlantic Monthly pub l ica t ion of a sec t ion of The Maine Woods cen so red a sen tence in which Tho reau declared that a p ine tree was as immor ta l a s he was and pe rchance wou ld "go to a s high a heaven . "

Melville a lso was at least once kept from pub l ica t ion by the relig ious scru-ples of the magaz ine s , and often he was harshly condemned for what he had mana ged to pub l ish . For years he bore the wrath of reviewers such as the one who denounced him for writing Moby-Dick and the Ha rpe r s for pub-lishing it: " The Judgmen t day will hold him liable for not turning his ta lents to better accoun t , when , too , bo th au thor s and pub l ishers of in jur ious books will be co jointly an swerab le for the in f luence of tho se book s upon the wide circle of immorta l m inds on which they have written their mark . The book-maker and the book-pub l isher had better do their work with a view to the trial it mu s t undergo at the bar of G od . " The u l t ima te resu lt was that Melville was s i lenced . Thi s was ex treme , but Eme r son , Tho reau , and Whi tman all su f fered for tran sgre s s ing the code of the Doc tor s of Divinity (Thoreau sa id he wished it were not the D .D . 's but the chickadee-dee s who ac ted a s cen-so r s ) . Tho reau , Whi tman , and S todda rd all had works cen so red be fore pub-licat ion in the Atlantic Monthly.

I M M I G R A T I O N A N D X E N O P H O B I A

However threa tened conservat ive Pro te s tan t s felt by T ran scenden ta l i sm and by relig ious specu la t ion s like Melville 's, they felt far mo re threa tened by Ca thol ic i sm when re fugees from the Napo leonic Wa r s were followed by ref-ugee s from opp re s sed and fam ine-s truck Ireland . In Bo s ton , Lyman Beecher , father of Harr iet Beeche r S towe , thundered ou t an t ipap i s t se rmon s , then pro fe s sed d i smay when in 1834 a mob in Cha r l e s town , acro s s the Charles River from Bo s ton , burned the Ur su l ine Conven t School where daugh ters

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 3 9

of many wea lthy fam i l ies were educa ted . For a t ime Lou i sa May Alcott 's mo ther devoted hersel f to needy Irish imm igran t s in Bo s ton , in effect defin-ing the job of socia l worker , all the t ime appa l led at the un s toppab l e tide of popery . Th rough the 1 8 3 0 s and 1840 s and long afterward , the Uni ted S ta te s was sa tura ted with lurid books and pamphle t s purpor t ing to reveal the truth abou t sexua l prac t ices in nunner ie s and monas ter i e s ( accoun t s of how pr iests and nun s d i spo sed of their bab ies were specia l ly pr ized) and abou t the pope 's scheme s to take over the M iss iss ipp i Valley ( S amue l F. B. Mo r se and others warned that Je su i t s were prowling the Ohio Valley , in d i sgu i se ) . An ex treme of xenophob ia was reached in the summe r of 1844 , when r ioters in Phila-delphia (the C ity , everyone poin ted out , of Brother ly Love ) bu rned Ca thol ic chu rche s and a sem inary . Schooled in cu ltura l relativism by his Sou th Se a exper iences , Melville was re spond ing to the curren t hostility when he descr ibed the pest i lent cond i t ions of s teerage pa s senge r s in em igran t ships and then made this p lea: " Le t us waive that ag i ta ted nat iona l top ic , a s to whether such mu l t i tudes of foreign poor shou ld be landed on our Amer i can shores ; let us waive it, with the one only though t , that if they can get here , they have God ' s right to come ; though they br ing all Ireland and her m iser ies with them . For the whole world is the pa tr imony of the whole wor ld ; there is no telling who doe s not own a s tone in the G rea t Wall of Ch in a . "

S om e job s by definition were deemed unfit for mos t nat ive-born Amer i-can s . In Moiry-Dicfe (chap ter 27 ) Melville sa id that fewer than half the men on wha l ing ships were Amer ican-born , a l though a lmo s t all the officers were . Then he added : "Herein it is the s ame with the Amer i can wha le fishery a s with the Amer i can army and military and merchan t navies , and the eng i-neer ing forces emp loyed in the cons truc t ion of the Amer i can C ana l s and Ra i lroads , " the "nat ive Ame r i can " providing the bra ins , the "rest of the wor ld" supp lying the mu sc l e s . The P an ama Ra i lroad was comp l e ted in 1855 at the cost of thou sand s of lives of cheap laborers from the Or ien t , Eu rope (espe-cially Ireland) , and the C a r ibbean . An art icle on the ra i lroad in the J anua ry 1859 Harper 's New MowtWy Magazine men t ioned many " Cool ie s from H in-do s tan " and reca l led that a thou sand Ch in amen had become "af fec ted with a melanchol ic , su icida l tendency , and score s of them ended their unhappy ex istence by their own hand s , " while many o thers died of d i sease s . Thi s article treated workers as d i spo sab l e produc t s , saying that the numbe r of those who died cou ld be rep lenished with , for in s tance , "freshly impor ted Ir ishmen and F renchmen . " For the first transcon t inen ta l ra i lroad in the United S ta te s , comp l e ted at Promon tory Point , U tah , on May 10, 1869 , the Union Paci f ic—work ing we s tward—drew laborers from Ireland , Ge rmany , and the Scand inavian coun tr ies , among other Eu ropean sou rce s ; the Cen tra l Paci f ic—work ing eas twa rd— impo r ted pe rhap s 1 5 , 0 0 0 Ch ine se for the mo s t hazardous job s . Wha t was to become of tho se still alive when the work was comp le ted? And , now that these As ian s were here , what was to keep o thers from following them? Tho se of Eu ropean ances try cou ld not imag ine how the Chine se m ight be integrated into the nat iona l pub l ic life. Con trad ic tory efforts both to u se imm igran t labor and to pre tend the imm igran t s were not here cha l lenged the think ing and the e thics of nat ive-born white Ame r i can s , producing waves of ant i- imm igrant p ropaganda and violence throughou t the per iod .

For all his humani tar ian e loquence , Melville , like the other writers,

4 4 0 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 2 0 - 1 8 6 5

rea l ized that the new imm igran t s were chang ing the country from the cozy , homogeneou s land it had seemed to be to the mo re fortuna te whi tes . In fact , the coun try had never been homogeneou s ; even before the great Irish migra-tion of the 1840 s , peop l e had arrived from many Eu ropean coun tr i e s , and the idea of s topp ing imm igra t ion select ively and shipp ing back some imm i -gran t s proved a s imprac t icab le a s the prewar " solu t ion " of colonizing black Ame r i can s "back " to Afr ica. Bu t the pace of imm igra t ion had increased rad-ically after the Civil War , a s did the pe rcen tage of imm igran t s arriving from sou thern and eas tern Eu ropean coun tr i e s . Many nat ive-born white peop l e shared Harr iet Beeche r S towe 's post—Civil Wa r nos ta lg ia for the days be fore ra i lroads , Ca thol ic s , and eas tern Eu ropean imm igra t ion . In the early 1880 s , pog rom s in Ru s s ia drove thou s and s of Jew s into exile , many to wes tern Eu rope , many to the Uni ted S ta te s , where imm igra t ion officials de ta ined a large numbe r of them at Ward ' s Is land in the Ea s t River, deem ing them unfit to be d i sembarked at C a s t l e G a rden , on the Battery , with mo s t other imm i -gran ts . In re spon se , E mm a Laza ru s in I88i founded the Socie ty for the Improvemen t and Coloniza t ion of Eas te rn Eu ropean Jew s .

N A T I O N A L S I N S

S om e of the writers of th j s j>er iod lived with the angu i shing paradox that the rrijjsiJdjiaTistic nat ion in the wor ld was imp l ica ted in con t inu ing na t iona l s ins : the near-genocide of the Ame r i can Ind ians (whole tr ibes in colonia l t ime sT iad a lready -becomeTTn Melvitte^^rToneous ph ra se for the Pequo t s , as ext inct as the ancien t Mede s ) , the en s lavemen t of b lack s , and (partly a by-product of slavery) the s taged "Execu t ive 's W a r " aga in s t Mex i co , s tarted by Pres iden t Polk be fore being dec lared by Cong re s s . The imper ia l ist ic Mex-ican Wa r seemed so gaud i ly exo t i c—and so d i s tan t— tha t only a sma l l m inor-ity of Amer i can writers voiced mo re than per functory oppo s i t ion ; an excep t ion was Tho reau , who spen t a night in the Conco rd ja i l in symbolic protest aga ins t being taxed to suppor t the war . Eme r son was an excep t ion , earlier , when mo s t writers were s i lent abou t the succe s s ive remova l of eas t-ern Ind ian tribes to less des irab le lands wes t of the M i s s i s s ipp i River , a s leg is lated by the Indian Remova l Act of 1 8 3 0 . Amer i can dest iny pla inly requ ired a \itt\e prac t ica l ca l l ou sne s s , mo s t whites felt, in a secu lar vers ion of the colonia l not ion that God had willed the ext irpat ion of the Ame r i can Ind ian . Henry W . Bel lows , the very popu lar Uni tar ian m inis ter of the Chu rch of All Sou l s in New York C ity (pastora l adviser of Will iam Cu l l en Bryant and M r s . He rman Melvil le) , had been pre s iden t of the Uni ted S ta te s Sanitary Comm i s s i on , the agency charged with the welfare of the Union volunteer army . In The Old World in Its New Face ( 1 8 6 8 ) , Bellows told of mee t ing a Ca l i fornian on shipboard in the Med i te rranean who had " just e scaped sca lp-ing on the p la in s " in 1867 and who though t "ex term ina t ion the only humane remedy for Ind ian troub l e s . " Bel lows added : "It is as toni shing how b lood-thirsty a little persona l exper ience of the Ind ians make s mo s t Amer ican s ! I have never known any body cro s s ing the P la ins who se humani ty survived the p a s s a ge . " La ter , he casua l ly a l luded to the "American Indian pass ion for b lood and ext inct ion of their enem i e s . "

It was black slavery , wha t Melville ca l led "man ' s fou lest c r ime , " which mo s t stirred the con sc i ence s of the white wr iters , and in descr ib ing his own

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 4 1

ens lavemen t , the fugitive Freder ick Doug las s developed a no tab le capaci ty to stir readers as well a s aud i ence s in the lec ture ha l ls . When the Fug it ive S lave L aw was en forced in Bo s ton in 1851 (by Melville 's father-in-law , Chie f Ju s t i c e Shaw ) , Tho reau worked his ou trage into his jou rna l s ; then after ano ther f amou s ca se in 1854 he comb ined the exper iences into his mos t sca thing speech , Slavery in Massachusetts , for delivery at a Fou r th of Ju ly coun terceremony at which a copy of the Con s t i tu t ion was bu rned becau se slavery was written into it. In that speech Tho reau summ ed up the disillu-s ionmen t that many of his genera t ion shared . H e had felt a vast bu t indefinite loss after the 1 8 5 4 ca se , he sa id : "I did not know at first wha t a i led me . At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a coun try . " On the very eve of the Civil War , Harr iet J a cob s recorded the angu i sh of a fugitive slave mo ther who se "owne r s " were a lways on the prowl to find her and turn her into the hard ca sh they needed . Mo re ob l iquely than Tho reau , Melville explored b lack slavery in Beni to Cereno as an index to the eme rg ing nat iona l charac ter . At his b itterest , he felt in the m id -1 8 5 0 s that " free Amer iky " was " intrep id , unpr incip led , reck less , predatory , with bound l e s s amb i t ion , civi-lized in externa ls bu t a savage at hear t . "

John Brown 's raid on Harper s Ferry in 1859 , immed ia tely repud ia ted by the new Repub l i can Party , drew from the now tubercu lar Tho reau a pas -s iona te de fen se . Du r ing the Civil Wa r itself, L incoln found the geniu s to suit diverse occas ion s with right language and length of u t terance , but the major writers fell silent . When the war began on April 12, 1 8 6 1 , with the firing of Con fede ra te gun s on Fort Sum te r , in Cha r l e s ton harbor , Irving, Coope r , Poe , and Fu l ler were dead (the younger two earlier than the older two) , and be fore Robert E . Lee 's surrender to U lysses S . G ran t at Appoma t -tox, V irg inia, on April 9 , 1 8 6 5 , Tho reau and Haw thorne had a lso d ied . S om e writers in this anthology had in their way , directly and indirectly , helped to br ing the war on : L incoln was not wholly teas ing if in fact he ca l led S towe " the little woman who had started the b ig war" ; Child and Whitt ier had by 1861 devoted decade s of their lives to the strugg le aga ins t slavery , a rou s ing fur ious res is tance to them bo th in the Nor th and in the Sou th ; and Doug -lass 's oratory had revea led to many white Nor therners a sen se of the evils of slavery and the humanne s s of tho se of ano ther race (or of m ixed race s ) . F irebrand Yankees such a s Tho reau and firebrand Sou the rne r s such a s G . W . Harr is had roused the pas s ion s of at least some membe r s of their own com -munit ies and reg ions . When the war c ame , mo s t northern writers were s low to have a sen se of its reality and , like Sou the rne r s , erroneous ly expec ted it to last only a few mon th s . V is it ing Bo s ton and Conco rd in 1 8 6 2 , fresh from the newly formed We s t Virginia (the port ion of a slave s ta te that had cho sen to stay with the Union ) , Rebecca Hard ing Davis saw that Eme r son had no not ion what suffer ing was involved. Haw thorne , who received her with en thu s iasm , had faced the start of the war a s a sou thern sympa thizer in a village that had welcomed John Brown , then had seen Washing ton in war-t ime , and reta ined , a s he always did , a prac t ica l polit ician 's sen se of things .

Among the an tebel lum writers the war did not evoke great fiction, but Melville 's uneven Batt ie-P ieces ( 1 8 6 6 ) inc luded some remarkab le med itat ive poem s as well a s the technica l ly in teres t ing Doneison , in which he conveyed vividly the anxiety of civilians awa i t ing news dur ing a prolonged and dub iou s batt le and eagerly read ing a loud the latest bu l let ins po s ted ou t s ide the tele-graph office . Whi tman ' s Drum-Taps ( 1 8 6 5 ) a lso is uneven bu t con ta in s

4 4 2 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E \820-\865

severa l great poem s . After a few cop ie s had been d ispersed , Whi tman held back the edit ion for a sequel ma inly con s i s t ing of newly written poems on L incoln , among them When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, the grea tes t literary work to come out of the war and one of the world 's great eleg ies . Both volumes summed up the nat iona l exper ience . Bo th writers looked ahead a s well a s backward , Whi tman ca l l ing "reconci l ia t ion " the "word over a l l , " and Melville urging in his Supplement to Battle-Pieces that the victor ious Nor th "be Chr i s t ian s toward our fellow-whites, as well a s philan throp is ts toward the b lacks , our fel low-men . " La ter in Specimen Days Whitman made a memo rab l e a t temp t to do the impo s s ib l e— to pu t the real war realist ically into a book .

Be fore she d ied , Child saw how little Recon s truc t ion had done to achieve her hope s for educa t ion and financial up l ift ing of former s laves . Bo th Whit-man and Melville , especia l ly in their later years , saw Amer i can polit ics cea se to be conce rned with great nat iona l s trugg les over momen tou s i s sue s ; rather , polit ics mean t corrup t ion , on a petty or a grand sca l e . Melville lived out the G i lded Age a s an emp loyee at the notor ious ly corrup t cu s tomhou se in New York City. In Clarel, foreseeing a de scen t from the presen t "civic ba rba r i sm " to " the Dark Ages of Democ racy , " he portrayed his Amer i can p i lgr ims to the Holy Land a s recognizing sadly that the t ime m ight come to honor the god of l im itat ions in what had been the land of opportunity , a t ime when Amer-icans m igh t cry: " To Te rm i nu s bu i ld fanes ! / C o lumbu s ended earth 's romance : / No New Wor ld to mank ind rema in s ! " Wr itten sel f-conscious ly a s a coun tercen tennia l poem , Clarel was pub l i shed early in J une 1876 (Geo rge Cu s te r and his men were riding toward Mon t an a Territory ; one of the first reviews of Clarel ran in the New York World on J une 26 , the day after the batt le at Little B ig Ho rn ) . No one wou ld have though t to invite Melville to compo se the pub l ic Cen tennia l Ode for the great celebra t ion in Philadelphia on Ju ly 4, but there were some who knew that Walt Whitman, a true nat iona l poet , m igh t well have been invited ins tead of Bayard Taylor , who so long be fore had written a va lent ine for Melville .

T H E C H A N C E F O R G R E A T N E S S

The Amer i can Revolut ion had helped to incite the French Revolut ion and , a s it seemed to many Ame r i can s , its d i sas trou s con sequence s , and in the po s t-Napoleonic era Ame r i can s strugg led to make s sen se of pro found polit-ical and socia l change s in Eu rope a s well a s a new scient if ic knowledge . In 1799 Napoleon ' s sold iers in Egypt had taken po s se s s ion of a large p iece of basa l t , the Rose t ta S tone ; a F rench civilian had deciphered its hierog lyphics , thereby initat ing modern Egyptology and in f luencing the study of the B ib le by sub jec t ing it to histor ica l pr incip les . Archaeolog ica l excava t ions in Italy and elsewhere were tran s form ing histor ica l and aes the t ic knowledge of clas-sical G ree ce and Rome . The G e rm an ar istocrat Baron A lexander von Hum -boldt (1769—1859), on his voyage to Cen tra l and Sou th Amer ica in 1799— 1804 , had made s tunning d iscover ies in botany , biology , geology , physical geography , me teorology , cl imatology , and even a s tronomy ; he pub l i shed his d iscover ies in many volume s , start ing in 1 8 0 7 . Long before Darwin published his On t Origin of Species ( 1 8 S 9 ) , b iolog ists were pub l ishing evidence of

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 4 4 3

p lant and anima l evolut ion , and geolog ists were cha l leng ing relig ious chro-nolog ies that set the creat ion of the world around 5 0 0 0 B . C . E . Knowledge of the phys ica l universe was increas ing explosively .

At the s ame t ime , vast parts of the earth were being seized , not s tud ied , a s Eu ropean s ta tes emba rked on a ferocious que s t for new colonies . One Amer i can writer, He rman Melville , had been on the spot when the F rench seized the Ma rque s a s and had arrived in Tahit i ju s t after the F rench in their warships ex tended the benef its of their pro tec t ion to that is land . Melville was in Honolu lu when Eng land rel inqu ished its brief control of the Hawa i ian Is lands . He then sa i led under the comm and of the man who had seized Ca l i fornia for the Uni ted S ta te s in 1843 , only to relinqu ish it the next day , when he received correc ted reports of Brit ish in ten t ions . The Ru s s ian s had control of an eno rmou s hunk of the Nor th Amer i can con t inen t—A laska . Grea t Br ita in , F rance , the Ne the r land s , Bu s s i a — any numbe r of Eu ropean powers m ight at any momen t seize any part of the Pacif ic , Afr ica, As ia , or even Cen tra l or Sou th Amer i ca . Eng land was a lready cha l leng ing Bo s ton and New York me rchan t s for mas tery of trade with China , and any one of severa l other coun tr ies might force J ap an to open its harbors to them , not the Uni ted S ta te s . The seizure of land after the Mex i can War had seemed , to a few Amer i can s , dep lorab le , but within mon th s gold had been d iscovered in Ca l -ifornia, clear evidence of divine b less ing on the war . After Ca l i fornia, what shou ld the Uni ted S ta te s seize next? Wr it ing Mofcy-Dicfe dur ing the Gold Ru sh , drawing on his persona l exper iences with imper ia l ism in the Paci f ic , Melville def ined Amer ica 's oppor tuni t ies in wha l ing terms (chap ter 8 9 ) : "Wha t to that apostolic lancer , Bro ther Jona than [the Uni ted S ta te s ] , is Texas but a F a s t -F i sh ? " Melville foresaw (chap ter 14) the t ime when Amer i ca wou ld "add Mex i co to Texas , and pile Cub a upon C an ad a " in its p irat ica l acqu is i t iveness .

At m id-century Irving was an old man and some dared to think an over-rated writer. Mos t of the writers in this per iod did their bes t work a s young men and women , fiercely amb i t iou s , and in spirit "essent ia l ly we s tern " (as Melville sa id in chap ter 22 of Israel Potter) . L iterary grea tne s s in Ame r i ca was up for grabs , there for the seizing as much a s the Ma rque s a s I s lands and Ca l ifornia had been . In his wha l ing book , Melville hoped to make literary grea tness a " F a s t -F i sh " forever. Wa l t Whi tman a few years later made the s ame g igant ic a t temp t to become the poet for Amer i ca . In the early 1 8 6 0 s , Emily Dick in son , to whom the gold of geniu s had been given in chi ldhood (poem 4 5 4 [455 ] ) , and who had made her farewells to fr iends bound for the Golden S ta te , knew that she was not only the Queen of Ca lvary (poem 3 4 8 [347] ) , but a lso the Queen of Ca l i fornia in literary g rea tne s s — a "Sovreign on a M ine " (poem 801 [856 ] ) , the "Pr ince of M i n e s " (poem 4 6 6 [597 ] ) . Thoreau , in Life without Pr incip le , character ist ica l ly denounced the "ru sh to Ca l i fornia," preferr ing to m ine the " aur i ferou s " reg ions within . The critic Sydney Sm i th had asked con temp tuou s ly in the Ed inburgh Review ( 1 8 2 0 ) : "In the four quar ters of the g lobe , who reads an Amer i can book ? " ; Tho reau , who had begun so modes t ly by addre s s ing his neighbors in Conco rd , at the end of Walden addre s sed the book to both John Bull and Bro ther J on a th an— to anyone in the four quar ters of the g lobe who cou ld read the Eng l ish language . Tha t was exuberan t "we s tern " amb i t i ou sne s s —wha t Melville called the " true Amer i can " spirit .

A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E

1820 Washington Irving, The Sketch Book

1821 William Cullen Bryant, 1821 Sequoyah (George Guess) invents

"Thanatopsis" syllabary in which Cherokee language can

be written

1821-22 Santa Fe Trail opens

\S2i James Fenimore Cooper, The 1823 Monroe Doctrine warns all

Pioneers European powers not to establish new

colonies on either Amer ican continent

1825 Erie Canal opens, connecting Great

Lakes region with the Atlantic

1827 David Cusick, Sketches of Ancient 1827 Baltimore and Ohio, nrst U .S .

History of the Six Nations railroad

1827—28 Cherokee Nation ratifies its new

constitution • The newspaper the Cherokee

Phoenix founded

182S—30 Cherokee Council composes

Memorials

1829 William Apess . A Son of the Forest • 1829—37 President Andrew Jackson

David Walker, Appeal encourages westward movement of white

population

1830 Congress passes Indian Removal

Act, allowing Jack son to relocate eastern

Indians west of the Mississippi

1831 William Lloyd Garrison starts The

Liberator, antislavery journal

1834 Catharine Maria Sedgwick, "A

Reminiscence of Federa l ism"

1836 Ralph Waldo Emerson , Nature 1836 Transcendentalists meet informally

in Boston and Concord

1838 Underground Railroad aids slaves

escaping north, often to Canada

1838-39 "Trail of Tears': Cherokees

forced from their homelands by federal

troops

\S39 Caroline Stanshury Kirkland, A New

Home—Who'll Follow?

1841 T . B. Thorpe, "The Big Bear of

Arkansas"

\S4i Margaret Fuller, ,lThe Great

Lawsuit"

1844 Samuel Morse invents telegraph

1845 Edgar Allan Poe , "The Raven " • 1845 United States annexes Texas

Frederick Doug lass , Narrative of the Life of

Frederick Douglass

1846—48 United States wages war against

Mexico; Treaty of Guada lupe Hidalgo cedes

entire southwest to Un ited States

Bo ld face lilies indicate works in the anthology .

4 4 4

T E X T S C O N T E X T S

1847 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1847 Brigham Young leads Mormons from

Evangeline Nauvoo, Illinois, to Salt Lake , Utah

Territory

1848 Seneca Falls Convent ion

inaugurates campa ign for women 's rights

1848-^»9 California Gold Rush

1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne , The Scarlet 1850 Fugitive Slave Act compromise of

Letter • Bayard Taylor, Eldorado 1850 obliges free states to return escaped

slaves to slaveholders

1851 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe , Uncle

Tom's Cabin

1854 Henry David Thoreau , Walden 1854 Republican Party formed ,

consolidating antislavery factions

1855 Walt Whitman , Leaves of Grass •

Lou ise Amelia Smith C lappe , "Ca l i forn ia ,

in 1851 and 1852 . Re s i den ce in the

M in e s "

1857 Fanny Fern (Sarah Willis Parton) , 1857 Supreme Court Dred Scott decision

Fresh Leaves denies citizenship to African Amer icans

1858 Abraham Lincoln , "A House 1858 Transatlantic cable fails after twenty-

Divided" seven days

1859 Lydia Maria Child, "Letter to Mrs . 1859 First successful U .S . oil well drilled,

Margaretta Mason " in Pennsylvania

186 0 Harriet Prescott Spofford, I 8 6 0 Short-lived Pony Express runs from

"C ircum s tance" Missouri to California

1860—65 Emily Dickinson writes several

hundred poem s

1861 Harriet Jacobs , Incidents in the Life 1861 South Carolina batteries fire on U .S .

of a Slave Girl • Rebecca Harding Davis, fort, initiating the Civil War; Southern

Life in the Iron-M i l ls states secede from the Union and found the

Confederate States of America

1 8 6 1 - 6 5 Civil War

1863 Emancipation Proclamation • Battle

of Gettysburg

186 6 John Greenleaf Whittier, Snow- 1866 Complet ion of two successful

Bound: A Winter Idyl transatlantic cables

1869 First transcontinental railroad

completed ; Central Pacific construction

crews composed largely of Ch inese laborers

1873 Louisa May Alcott, "Transcendental

Wild Oa t s "

1883 Emma Lazarus , "The New Co lo s su s "

4 4 5

American Literature 1865 -1914

T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F A N A T IO N

In the second ha lf of the nine teen th cen tury , the fertile , m inera l-r ich Amer-ican con t inen t west of the Appa lachian s and A l leghenies was occup i ed , often by force , largely by Eu ropean s , who exp loited its re source s freely. The s e new Ame r i can s , their numbe r s doub l ed by a con t inuou s flow of imm igran t s , pu shed wes tward to the Pacif ic coas t , d i sp lac ing Na t ive Amer i can cu l ture s and Spani sh se t t lemen t s when they s tood in the way . Vas t s tands of t imber were con sumed ; numbe r l e s s herds of bu f fa lo and o ther wild g ame gave way to cat t le , sheep , f arms , villages, and cit ies and the ra i lroads that linked them to marke t s back eas t ; var ious technolog ies converted the country 's immen se natura l re source s into industr ia l produc t s both for its own burgeoning pop-u lat ion and for foreign marke t s .

The Civil War , the seem ing ly inevitable resu lt of growing econom i c , polit-ical , socia l , and cu ltura l divis ions be tween Nor th and Sou th , las ted four years , cos t some eight billion dollars , and c la imed mo re than six hundred thou sand lives. Its savagery seem s a lso to have left the coun try mora l ly exhaus ted . Never thele s s , in sp ite of the a s toni shing loss of life and ruin of property , especia l ly in the Sou th , the coun try pro spered mater ia l ly over the five following decade s . The war effort s t imu la ted technolog ica l innova t ions and developed new me thod s of efficiently organizing and mana g ing the movemen t of large numbe r s of peop l e , raw ma ter ia ls , and good s . After the war these accomp l i shmen t s were adap ted to industr ia l moderniza t ion on a mass ive sca l e . The first transcon t inen ta l ra i lroad was comp l e ted in 1 8 6 9 ; industr ia l ou tpu t grew exponent ia l ly ; agr icu ltura l product ivity increased dra-mat ica l ly ; electricity was in troduced on a large sca l e ; new me an s of com-munica t ion , such a s the telephone , revolut ionized many a spec t s of daily life ; coa l , oil, iron , gold , silver, and o ther k inds of m inera l wea lth were d iscovered and extracted , produc ing large numbe r s of vast individual for tunes and mak-ing the nat ion a s a whole rich enough , for the first t ime , to cap ita l ize its own further developmen t . Ry the end of the century , no longer a colony politically or econom ica l ly , the Uni ted S ta te s cou ld beg in its own overseas imper ia l ist expans ion (of which the Spani sh-Amer i can Wa r in 1898 was only one s ign ) .

The centra l mater ia l fact of the per iod was industr ia l izat ion on a sca le unpreceden ted in the earlier exper iences of G rea t Br ita in and Eu rope . Be tween 1 8 5 0 and 1 8 8 0 cap ita l invested in manu f ac tu r ing indus tr ies more than quadrup l ed , while factory emp loymen t near ly doub l ed . By 1885 four transcont inenta l ra i lroad l ines were comp l e ted , u s ing in their own con s truc-tion and carrying to manu f ac tu r ing cen ters in C leve land and Detroit the

1 2 2 3

1 2 2 4 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 6 5 - 1 9 1 4

nat ion 's qu in tup led ou tpu t of steel from P i t tsburgh and Chica go . As major industr ies were con sol ida ted into monopol ie s by increas ing ly powerfu l (and ru thless) individua ls a very sma l l numbe r of men c am e to control such enor-mous ly prof itable en terpr ises as steel , oil, ra i lroads , mea t pack ing, bank ing, and finance. Among these men were J ay Gou ld , J im Hill, Le land S tan ford , Cornel iu s Vanderb i lt , Andrew Ca rneg i e , J . P . Mo rg an , and John D . Rocke-feller. Robber baron s to some , cap ta in s of industry to o thers , they succe s s -fully squeezed out their compe t i tor s and accumu la ted vast wea lth and power—socia l and political a s well a s econom i c .

In 1865 the Uni ted S ta te s , except for the manu f ac tu r ing cen ters of the nor theas tern seaboa rd , was a country of farms , villages, and sma l l towns . Mo s t of its cit izens were involved in agr icu l ture or sma l l family bu s ine s se s . In 1870 the U . S . popu la t ion was 38 .5 m i l l ion ; by 1910 it had grown to 9 2 million and by 1 9 2 0 , to 123 mi l l ion . Thi s increase in popu la t ion c ame abou t a lmo s t entirely on accoun t of imm igra t ion , a s did the popu la t ion shift from coun try to city. Perhap s 2 5 million peop l e , most ly Eu ropean s , en tered the Uni ted S ta te s be tween the Civil Wa r and Wor ld Wa r I. S om e of the new-come r s tried farm ing; but mo s t sett led in the c i t ie s—even in the cities in which they had d i semba rked— so that , for examp l e , the popu la t ion of New York C ity grew from 0 .5 million to nearly 3.5 million be tween 1865 and the turn of the twent ieth century , whereas Ch ica go , with a popu la t ion of 2 9 , 0 0 0 in 1850 , had more than 2 million inhab i tan ts by 1910 . (Yet, to keep things in perspec t ive , it shou ld be no ted that in 1 9 0 0 only New York , Ch ica go , and Philadelphia had more than 1 million inhab i tan ts each . ) The new Ame r i can s , a long with their children and their children 's children , enab led the Uni ted S ta te s eventua l ly to become the urban , industr ia l , internat iona l power we recognize today ; they a lso irrevocably a ltered the e thnic compo s i t ion of the popu la t ion and con tr ibu ted immeasurab ly to the democra t iza t ion of the nat ion 's cu ltura l life. In 1890 mos t white Ame r i can s ( includ ing the Irish who had begun to come in the 1840 s ) either lived in New Eng land or had New Eng land ance s to r s . Bu t by 1 9 0 0 New Eng lande r s were no longer numer ica l ly dom inan t . Long-se t t led and newly arrived white peop le faced each other acro s s divides of power , income , and pr ivi lege—worker aga in s t owner , farm aga ins t city, imm igran t aga ins t native born , crea t ing su sp ic ion and socia l turbu lence on a sca le that the nat ion had never seen be fore .

Thi s trans forma t ion of an ent ire con t inen t involved inca lcu lab le su f fer ing for mi l l ions of peop le even a s o thers pro spered . In the coun trys ide increas ing numbe r s of farmers , dependen t for transpor ta t ion of their crop s on the monopol is t ic ra i lroads , were squeezed off the land by what novelist F rank Norr is charac ter ized a s the g iant "oc topu s " that cr i s scro s sed the con t inen t . Everywhere independen t farmers were p laced "unde r the lion 's p aw " of land specu la tor s and ab sen tee land lords that Ham l in Gar land ' s story made infa-mou s . Large- sca le farm ing— init ia l ly in K an s a s and Nebra ska , for ex amp l e— a lso squeezed family farmers even a s such prac t ice s increased gross agricu l-tural yields . For many , the great cit ies were a lso , a s the socia l ist novelist Up ton S incla ir sen sed , jung l e s where only the s tronges t , the most ru thless , and the luck ies t survived . An oversupp ly of labor kept wage s down and a l lowed industr ia l ists to ma in ta in i nhumane and dange rou s work ing cond i -t ions for men , women , and children who compe ted for job s .

Nei ther farmers nor urban laborers were effectively organized to pu r sue

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 1 2 2 5

their own interests , and neither group had any s ignif icant polit ical leverage until the 1880 s , when the Amer i can Federa t ion of Labor , an a s socia t ion of nat iona l union s of skilled workers , eme rged a s the first unified nat iona l voice of organized labor . Be fore then leg is lators a lmo s t exclusively served the inter-ests of bu s ine s s and industry , and the scanda l s of Pres iden t Gran t ' s adm in-istrat ion , the loot ing of the New York C ity treasury by William Marcy ( "Bos s " ) Tweed in the 1870 s , and the later horrors of munic ipa l corrupt ion exposed by journa l is t L incoln S te f fens and other "muck rake r s " were symp-toma t ic of what many writers of the t ime took to be the age of the " G rea t B a rbecue . " Early a t temp t s by labor to organize were crude and often violent , and such group s as the "Molly Ma gu i re s , " which per formed ac t s of terror ism in the coa l -m ining area of nor theas tern Pennsylvania, con f irmed m idd le-c lass fears that labor organizat ions were "illegal con sp i rac ie s " and thus pub l ic enem i e s . Direct violence was probab ly , as young rad ica l writer E mm a Gold-man believed , a necessary s tep toward es tab l ishing meaningfu l ways of nego-t iat ing d i spu te s be tween industria l workers and their emp loyers ; it wa s , in any event , not until collect ive barga ining leg is lat ion was enac ted in the 1 9 3 0 s that labor effectively acqu ired the right to strike .

T H E L I T E B A B Y M A B K E T P L A C E

The rap id transcon t inen ta l se t t lemen t and new urban industr ia l c ircum-s tance s summa r i zed above were accompanied by the developmen t of a nat iona l l iterature of great abundance and variety. New theme s , new forms , new sub jec t s , new reg ions , new au thors , new aud i ence s all eme rged in the l iterature of this ha lf century . In fiction, charac ter s rarely repre sen ted be fore the Civil Wa r became fami l iar figures: industr ia l workers and the rural poor , amb i t ious bu s ine s s leaders and vagran ts , pros t i tu tes and unheroic sold iers . Women from many socia l group s , Afr ican Ame r i can s , Nat ive Ame r i can s ; ethnic m inor it ies , imm igran t s : all began to write for pub l ica t ion , and a rap-idly burgeoning market for pr inted work helped es tab l ish au thor ship a s a poss ib le career .

S om e accoun t , however brief, of the growth of this market may be helpful in under s tand ing the econom i c s of Amer i can cu ltura l developmen t . S ince colonia l t imes new spaper s had been impor tan t to the polit ica l , socia l , and cu ltura l life of Amer i ca , but in the decade s after the Civil Wa r their numbe r s and in f luence grew . Jo seph Pulitzer es tab l ished the S t . Lou i sin 1878 , and in 1883 he bough t the New York bo th paper s were hugely succe s s fu l . William Randolph Hear s t had a lready made the S an Fran-cisco the dom inan t new spaper in the far west , and in 1895 he bough t the New York to compe te with Pulitzer 's In 1897

was founded ; its circu lat ion eventua l ly reached 2 5 0 , 0 0 0 and was read by three or four t imes that number . Many of the "wr iters" who went on to become " au tho r s " got their start as new spaper journa l i s t s (B ierce , C ah an , C rane , Dreiser , Su i S in Far , Harr is , William Dean Howells , Frank Norr is , and Twa in among them ) . Perhap s of equa l impor tance to the developmen t of literary careers and l iterature a s an insti-tution was the e s tab l i shmen t of new spaper synd ica tes in the 1880 s by Irving Bachellor and S . S . McC lu re . The se synd ica tes pub l i shed humo r , news , car-

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toon s , and com i c strips (by the 1 8 9 0 s ) , bu t they a lso pr inted bo th short fiction and nove l s —C rane ' s The Red Badge of Courage, for examp l e— in ins ta l lmen t s .

In the m idd le of the eigh teen th cen tury Ben j am in Frank l in and Andrew Brad ford were among the first to pub l ish mon thly magaz ine s , in no sma l l part to demon s t ra te that a distinctively Ame r i can cu l ture was form ing on the Nor th Amer i can con t inen t . By the early years of the nine teen th cen tury weekly magaz ine s such a s the Saturday Evening Post ( founded in 1 8 2 1 ) , the Saturday Press ( 1 8 3 8 ) , and the New York Ledger ( 1 8 4 7 ) pub l i shed many writers of fiction, includ ing Ma rk Twa in . E a s t Co a s t magaz ine s such a s Har-per's New Monthly Magazine ( 1 8 5 0 ) , Scribner's Monthly ( 1 8 7 0 ) , Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine ( 1 8 8 1 ) , the Atlantic Monthly ( 1 8 5 7 ) , and the Galaxy ( 1 8 6 6 ) all provided ou t le ts for such figures a s Ka te Chop i n , S a rah O rne Jewe t t , Henry J am e s , William Dean Howel l s , S a rah P iatt , Su i S in Far , Ma rk Twa in , and Con s t ance Fen imo re Wool son . On the We s t Coa s t , the Overland Monthly ( 1 8 6 8 ) eme rged a s the lead ing literary per iod ica l , pub-lishing Bret Ha r te , Ambro se B i erce , J a ck London , and Ma rk Twa in among o thers . Thi s bare l ist ing of magaz ine s and literary con tr ibu tors is in tended only to sugge s t the impo r tance of per iod ica ls in provid ing sou rce s of income and aud i ence s crucia l to the further forma t ion of a comp l ex Ame r i can lit-erary tradit ion .

Many of these per iod ica ls a lso p layed a part in the eme rgence toward the end of the nine teen th cen tury of wha t the critic Wa rne r Ber tho f f aptly des-igna tes " the l iterature of a rgumen t " —powe r fu l works in sociology , philoso-phy , and psychology , many of them impel led by the spirit of exposure and re form . It wou ld be hard to exaggera te the in f luence—on o ther writers as well a s on the educa ted pub l i c—o f Henry George ' s Progress and Poverty ( 1 8 7 9 ) , Le s ter F rank Ward ' s The Psychic Factors in Civilization ( 1 8 9 3 ) , Henry Dema re s t L loyd 's Wealth against Commonwealth ( 1 8 9 4 ) , Brook s Adam s ' s The Law of Civilization and Decay ( 1 8 9 5 ) , Char lo t te Perk ins G i l-man ' s Women and Economics ( 1 8 9 8 ) , Thor s tein Veb len 's The Theory of the Leisure Class ( 1 8 9 9 ) , William J ame s ' s The Varieties of Religious Experience ( 1 9 0 2 ) , and Ida Tarbel l 's The History of the Standard Oil Company ( 1 9 0 4 ) .

In short , a s the Uni ted S ta te s be c ame an internat iona l polit ica l , econom i c , and military power dur ing this ha l f cen tury , the quan t i ty and qua l ity of its literary produc t ion kept pace . In its new secur ity , moreover , it welcomed (in trans la t ion ) the lead ing Eu ropean figures of the t im e— L e o Tols toy , Henr ik Ibsen , An ton Chekhov , Em i l e Zola, Beni to Pere s G a ldo s , G iovanni Ve rg a — often in the co lumn s of Henry J a m e s and Will iam De an Howel l s , who reviewed their works en thus ias t ica l ly in Harper's Weekly and Harper's Monthly, the North American Review, and other lead ing jou rna l s of the era. Amer i can writers in this per iod , like mo s t writers of o ther t imes and p lace s , wrote to earn money , ga in f ame , change the wor ld , and—ou t of that mys-ter ious compu l s i on to find the bes t order for the be s t wo rd s — to express themselve s in a pe rmanen t form . The na ture of that fo rm—wha t m igh t be ca l led the "rea l ist ic internat iona l art s tory "—was itself, of cou r se , a produc t of the comp lex interplay of histor ica l forces and ae s the t i c developmen t s apparen t , in re trospec t , from the t ime of the pub l ica t ion of F rench writer Gu s tave F lauber t 's Madame Bovary ( 1 8 5 6 ) and , especia l ly , his Three Tales ( 1 8 7 7 ) . Among the lead ing Ame r i can rea l ists of the per iod were Ma rk Twa in ,

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 1 2 2 7

Henry J am e s , Ed ith Whar ton , and William Dean Howel ls , who toge ther encompa s sed literary style from the com i c vernacu lar through ordinary dis-cou r se to impress ionis t ic sub jectivity . Among them these writers recorded life on the vanishing frontier , in the village , sma l l town , and turbu len t me tropol is , as well a s in Eu ropean resorts and cap i ta ls . They e s tab l i shed the literary identity of distinctively Amer i can pro tagonis t s , specif ica l ly the ver-nacu lar boy hero and the "Amer ican G ir l , " the baffled and s tra ined m idd le-c lass family , the bu s i ne s sman , the psycholog ica l ly comp l i ca ted cit izens of a new internat iona l cu l ture . Toge ther , in short , they set the examp l e and char ted the future cou r se for the sub jec t s , theme s , technique s , and styles of fiction we still call modern .

F O R M S O F R E A L I S M

Rroadly speak ing, realism is u sed to label a movemen t in Eng l ish , Eu ropean , and Amer i can l iterature that ga thered force from the 1 8 3 0 s to the end of the century . It was , u lt imately , no thing mo re or less than the a t temp t to write a l iterature that recorded life as it was lived rather than life a s it ough t to be lived or had been lived in t imes pas t . As de f ined by William Dean Howells ( 1 8 3 7 - 1 9 2 0 ) , the magazine editor who was for some decade s the chie f Amer i can advoca te of rea l ist ic ae s the t ic s as well a s au tho r of over thirty novels that strove for rea l ism , rea l ism "is no thing more and no thing less than the truthful trea tmen t of ma ter ia l . " A l though this definition doe s not an swer every que s t ion that may be ra ised abou t truth , trea tmen t , or even abou t mater ia l , it offers a usefu l point of depar ture . Henry J a m e s spoke of the "documen ta ry " va lue of Howells 's work , thereby ca l l ing a t ten t ion through Howells to rea l ism 's preoccupa t ion with the phys ica l sur face s , the part icu-larities of the sen sa te wor ld in which fictional charac ter s lived. The se char-acters were "repre sen ta t ive " or ordinary cha rac te r s —cha rac te r s one m igh t pass on the street without not icing. Unlike their roman t ic coun terpar t s , they don 't walk with a l imp , their eyes don 't b laze , they don 't emana te d iabolica l power . Rea l i sm , as prac t iced by Howells , part icu lar ly in The Rise of Silas Lapham ( 1 8 8 5 ) , the novel many literary histor ians have identified a s qu in-tessent ia l ly rea l ist ic in the Amer i can tradit ion , seeks to crea te the illusion of everyday life being lived by ordinary peop le in fami l iar surround ings— l i fe seen through a clear g lass window ( though partly opened to a l low for the full range of sen se exper ience ) .

Ed ith Whar ton ' s prac t ice of rea l ism shows it at its mo s t technica l ly adroit . In her early story " Sou l s Be la ted " ( included here) set t ing is rendered with the fine precis ion we a s soc ia te with rea l ism : one of the bela ted sou l s , the recently divorced Lydia T i l lo tson , returns to her hotel s itt ing room now uncomfortab ly shared with her lover: " She sat g lancing vaguely abou t the little sitt ing room , dimly lit by the pa l l id-g lobed lamp , which left in twilight the out l ines of the furniture , of his writing tab le heaped with book s and paper s , of the tea roses and j a sm i n e droop ing on the man te lp i ece . How like home it had all g rown—how like home ! " Whar ton had a portra it-pa inter 's eye for detail and especia l ly for the subt le ways light made the phys ica l world p last ic . The charac ter s in the story, while they be long to a higher socia l c lass than the L aph am s of Howells 's f amou s novel , are all recognizab le a s mem -

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bers of that c lass . Indeed , ano ther pa s s a ge from the story sugge s t s that it is the asp ira t ion of the wea lthy to be a s much like each o ther a s po s s ib l e— to live a life without surpr ises or drama :

The mora l a tmo sphe re of the T i l lo tson interior was as carefully screened and cur ta ined a s the hou se itself: Mr s T i l lotson senior dreaded ideas as mu ch a s a draft in her back . Pruden t peop le like an even tempe ra tu re ; and to do anything unexpec ted was as foolish a s going ou t in the rain . One of the chie f advan tage s of being r ich was that one need not be exposed to un fore seen con t ingencie s : by the u se of ordinary f irmness and common sen se one cou ld make sure of doing exactly the s ame thing every day at the s ame hour .

Whar ton crea te s a phys ica l set t ing of great part icu lar ity and fami l iar char-acter types ; but her conc lud ing sen tence revea ls a sat ir ica l intent a s del ic ious as it is author ia l ly intrus ive . Indeed , while it is true that in her bes t novels Whar ton holds a mirror up to New York high society she is more in teres ted in the psycholog ica l and mora l reality of the drama of human con sc iou sne s s than she is in the scenery that furnishes the s tage on which the drama is enac ted . Even in such centra l ly rea l ist ic novels of manne r s such a s The House of Mirth ( 1 9 0 5 ) , The Custom of the Country ( 1 9 1 3 ) , and The Age of Innocence ( 1 9 2 0 ) Whar ton ' s pr imary conce rn s are mo re nearly with the in tang ib le— thwar ted des ire , self-betraya l , mu rde rou s emo t ion , repre s sed voice s— than with the interior decora t ion of man s i on s or the fashionab le dress of her charac ter s .

In fact , it proved impo s s ib le for any realist to represen t things exactly a s they were ; l iterature demand s shap ing narrat ives where life is me s sy and ca l ls for narrators where life is not narra ted . Presen t-day literary theor ists are much more aware of what is ca l led " the cr is is of repre sen ta t ion "—by which is mean t the d i f ference be tween the represen ta t ion and the thing repre-sen ted— than were this genera t ion of rea l ists themselve s . Bu t if they had been aware of this prob l em , they wou ld likely have ins isted on the va lue and s igni f icance of their work in ca l l ing a t ten t ion to areas of exper ience that writers had never dea lt with be fore . It cou ld be p laus ib ly a rgued that all l iterature after rea l ism has been , to some degree , "rea l is t ic " in its a im s .

Work ing with great sel f-awareness at the very boundar i e s of rea l ism , the two grea tes t art ists of the e ra —Hen ry J am e s and Ma rk Twa i n—unde r s tood qu ite well that language was an interpretat ion of the real rather than the real thing itself. Twa in 's work was rea l ist ic in its u se of col loqu ia l and vernacu lar speech a s oppo sed to high-flown rhetor ic and in its pa rade of charac ter s drawn from ord inary wa lks of life. For many later wr iters , the s imp l e language of Huckleberry Finn signified the beg inning of a truly Ame r i can style . Bu t Twa in 's work a lso embod i ed a remarkab l e com i c gen iu s — the au thor of Huckleberry Finn is funny in ways that Hu ck himsel f cou ld never ach ieve— and re semb led pe r fo rmance comedy . Indeed , Twa in achieved eno rmou s suc-ce s s as a pub l ic reader of his own work . At the other ex treme , over a long career Henry J am e s worked his way from recognizab ly rea l ist ic fiction, with a large cas t of socially specif ied (a l though typically upper-c lass ) charac ters descr ibed by an a l l-knowing and comp le tely accu ra te narra tor , on toward increas ing ly sub t le represen ta t ions of the flow of a charac ter ' s inner though t , such that his elaborately me taphor i ca l work be c ame the s tart ing poin t for psycholog ica l , s t ream-o f -con sc iou sne s s fiction.

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 1 2 2 9

Na tu ra l i sm is commonly under s tood a s an extens ion or intens if icat ion of rea l ism . The intens if icat ion involves the in troduc t ion of charac ter s of a kind only occas iona l ly to be found in the fiction of Howells , J am e s , or Wh a r ton— charac ters from the fringes and lower dep th s of con temporary society , char-ac ters who se fates are the produc t of degenera te heredity , a sord id environ-men t , and a good dea l of bad luck . B ierce , C rane , Dreiser , London , and Norr is are usua l ly the figures identified a s the lead ing Amer i can na tura l is ts of this per iod , bu t be fore we turn to their work the philosophic and scient if ic backgrounds of na tura l ism requ ire some a t ten t ion .

One of the mo s t far-reaching intellectua l events of the last ha lf of the nineteenth cen tury was the pub l icat ion in 1859 of Cha r l e s Darwin 's Origin of Species. This book , together with his Descent of Man ( 1 8 7 0 ) , hypothes ized on the bas i s of mass ive phys ica l evidence that over the m i l lennia human s had evolved from " lower" forms of life. Hum an s were specia l , no t— a s the B ib le t augh t—becau se God had crea ted them in H is image , but becau se they had success fu l ly adap ted to chang ing environmen ta l cond i t ions and had pa s sed on their surviva l-mak ing charac ter is t ics . In the 1 8 7 0 s Eng l ish phi-losopher Herber t Spencer ' s app l ica t ion of Darwin 's theory of evolut ion to socia l relat ions was en thus ias t ica l ly welcomed by many lead ing Amer i can bu s ine s smen . Andrew Ca rneg i e was only one succe s s fu l industr ia l ist who argued that unres tra ined compe t i t ion was the equ iva lent of a law of na ture des igned to el im ina te tho se unfit for the new econom i c order .

Ano ther re spon se to Darwin was to accep t the de term inis t ic imp l ica t ions of evolut ionary theory and to u se them to accoun t for the behavior of char-ac ters in literary works . Tha t is, charac ter s were conceived as mo re or less comp lex comb ina t ion s of inher ited attr ibutes and hab i ts ingra ined by socia l and econom i c forces . As Em i le Zola (1840—1902) , the influential F rench theorist and novelist , pu t the mat ter in his es say " The Exper imen ta l Novel " ( 1 8 8 0 ) :

In short , we mu s t opera te with charac ter s , pa s s i on s , human and socia l da ta as the chem i s t and the phys icist work on inert bod ies , as the phys-iologist works on living bod ie s . De te rm in i sm governs everything. It is scientific invest igat ion ; it is exper imen ta l reasoning that comba t s one by one the hypo theses of the idea l ists and will rep lace novels of pu re imag-inat ion by novels of observat ion and exper imen t .

A numbe r of Amer i can writers adop ted a spec t s of this pe s s im i s t ic form of rea l ism , this so-ca l led natura l ist ic view of humank ind , though each writer incorpora ted such na tura l i sm into his or her work in individua l ways , to different degree s , and comb ined with other perspec t ives . It wou ld be a m is-take in short to believe that Amer i can writers s imp ly cobb l ed their under-s tand ings of Darwin , Spence r , or Zola into some rigid, absolu t is t , dogma t i c pos it ion shared by all of them . Rather , writers re sponded to these cha l lenge s to traditional belief sys tems in diverse and innovat ive ways . They were all concerned on the one hand to exp lore new terr i tor ies— the p re s su re s of biol-ogy, environmen t , and other mater ia l force s— in mak ing peop l e , part icu lar ly lower-class peop l e , who they were . On the other hand , B ierce , C rane , Drei-ser, London , and Norr is all a l lowed in different degrees for the va lue of human beings , for their potent ia l to make some mea su re of sen se ou t of their exper ience and for their capaci ty to act compas s iona te ly—even altruisti-ca l ly—under the mo s t adverse c i rcum s tance s . Even though , therefore , they

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were cha l leng ing conven t iona l wi sdom abou t human mot ivat ion and cau -sality in the natura l wor ld , the b l eakne s s and pe s s im i sm some t ime s found in their fiction are not the s ame a s de spa ir and cynicism .

Cr it ic Ca thy Davidson charac ter izes Ambro se B ierce a s "a literary hippo-gryph who comb ine s e lemen t s that by s tandard literary histor iography shou ld not be con joined : rea l ism and imp re s s ion i sm , na tura l i sm and surrea l i sm . " So while in some re spec t s and in some stor ies B ierce m igh t be sa id to be "na tura l is t ic , " a carefu l read ing of any of his be s t short s to r i e s — " Chica -maug a , " "An Occu r rence at Owl C reek B r idge , " and " The M an and the Sn ak e " to name th ree—make s clear the inadequacy of na tura l i sm a s a way of exp la ining or interpret ing B ierce . Undu e at tent ion to the sen sa t iona l and gro te sque , Davidson a rgue s , can bl ind readers to the po s tmode rn self-reflexiveness of B ierce .

S tephen C r ane is ano ther ca se in point . C rane believed , a s he sa id of Maggie, that environmen t coun t s for a great dea l in de term in ing human fate . Bu t not every pe r son born in a s lum end s up a s a hood lum , drunk , or su i c ide . "A great dea l , " moreover , is not the s ame a s everything. Na tu re is not host i le , he observes in " The Open Boa t , " only " indifferent , flatly ind if ferent . " Indeed , the earth in " The B lue Ho te l " is de scr ibed in one of the mo s t f amou s pa s s a ge s in natura l ist ic fiction a s a "whir l ing, fire-smote, ice-locked , d isease-s tr icken , space-los t bu lb . " At the end of the story, however , the que s t ion s of respon-sibility and agency are still alive . In C rane ' s The Red Badge of Courage Henry F l em ing re spond s to the very end to the world of chao s and violence that surrounds him with a l terna t ing surge s of panic and sel f-congra tu la t ions , not a s a man who has fully under s tood himsel f and his p lace in the wor ld . All the s ame , Henry has learned some thing —o r at leas t he seems to have done so . C r ane , like mo s t na tura l is ts , is more amb iguou s , more accep t ing of par-adoxes than a reduc t ive not ion of na tura l i sm wou ld seem to a l low for.

Biology , environmen t , psycholog ica l dr ives, and chance , that is to say, p lay a large part in shap ing human end s in C rane ' s fiction. Bu t after we have gran ted this ostens ib ly natura l ist ic perspec t ive to C r ane , we are still left with his d is t inc t iveness as a writer, with his persona l hones ty in report ing what he saw (and his concom i tan t re ject ion of accep ted literary conven t ion s ) , and with his u se of impress ionis t ic literary technique s to pre sen t incomp l e te charac ter s and a broken wor ld—a world more random than scient ifically pred ic tab le . We are a lso left, however , with the hardly pe s s im i s t i c imp l ica-tion of " The Open Boa t " : that precisely bec au se human beings are expo sed to a savage world of ch ance where dea th is always imm inen t , they wou ld do well to learn the art of sympa the t ic ident if icat ion with o thers and how to prac t ice solidarity , an art often learned at the pr ice of dea th . Wi thou t this deep ly felt human connec t ion , human exper ience is as meaning l e s s as wind , shark s , and wave s — and this is not , finally, wha t C r ane believed .

Theodo re Dreiser certa inly did not sha re C rane ' s tendency to u se words and image s as if he were a compo se r or a pa in ter . Bu t he did share , at least early in his career , C rane ' s skep t ic ism abou t hum an be ings ; like C rane he was more inclined to see men and women a s more like mo th s drawn to f lame than lords of crea t ion . Bu t , aga in , it is not Dreiser 's beliefs that make him a s ignif icant figure in Amer i can letters: it is wha t his imag ina t ion and literary technique do with an extremely rich set of ideas , exper iences , and emo t i on s to crea te the "color of l ife" in his fiction that make him a writer worth our attent ion . If C rane gave Amer i can readers through the per sona l hone s ty of

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 1 2 3 1

his vision a new sen se of the human con sc iou sne s s unde r cond i t ions of ex treme pre s su re , Dreiser gave them for the first t ime in his unwieldy novels such as S ister Carrie ( 1 9 0 0 ) and Jennie Gerhardt ( 1 9 1 1 ) a sen se of the fum-bl ing, yearning, con fu sed re spon se to the s imu l taneou s ly enchan t ing , excit-ing, ugly, and dange rou s me tropolis that had become the fam i l iar re s idence for such large numbe r s of Ame r i can s by the turn of the century . Abraham C ah an , like Dreiser , wrote abou t city-dwellers, in par t icu lar abou t eas tern Eu ropean Jew s who , start ing in 1 8 8 2 , began m igra t ing in large numbe r s to Amer i ca . Many of these Y idd ish-speak ing imm igran t s set t led in the Lower Ea s t S ide ghe t to of Manha t tan . C ahan ' s ma jor novel The Rise of David Lev-insky ( 1 9 1 7 ) brilliantly exp lores the tens ions en ta i led in the cou r se of rec-oncil ing tradit iona l va lues and ways of living with Amer i can moderni ty .

Exclus ive focu s on atavist ic impu l se s in London ' s Call of the Wild ( 1 9 0 3 ) and The Sea-Wolf ( 1 9 0 4 ) may keep readers from re spond ing to the com -plexities of these and other of London ' s bes t fiction. " The L aw of L i fe " may be cited in suppor t of critic Ear l Labor ' s con ten t ion that " the essen t ia l cre-ative tens ion for [London ' s ] literary artistry , is the oppos i t ion of ma ter ia l i sm versus sp ir i tua l i sm— tha t is, the tens ion be tween the log ica l and the scient if ic on the one hand and the irrational and myst ica l on the o ther . " In the " L aw of L i fe " O ld Ko skoo sh , abou t to be left to die by his tribe , thinks: "Na tu re did not care . T o life she set one task , gave one law . To perpe tua te was the task of life, its law is dea th . " The rather abs trac t ref lect ion wou ld seem to sugge s t that the story is driven by a determ inist ic view of l i fe— tha t no thing individua ls did was of any real s igni f icance . Yet the bu lk of the story is given over to O ld Ko skoo sh ' s memo r i e s of his life and part icu lar ly to the re-creat ion of a format ive momen t from his youth a s he and a companion come upon the scene of an old moo se strugg l ing in vain aga ins t the circle of wolves that have wounded and will soon devour him . In re-creat ing this extraordinary momen t in all of its vivid, drama t i c power , and in identifying with the to tem ic figure of the moo se , Ko skoo sh , it m igh t be a rgued , has erased his ear l ier genera l izat ion abou t evolut ionary necess i ty and the meaning l e s sne s s of the individua l . Ac ts of imag ina t ion and ident if icat ion do lend mean ing and dig-nity to human ex is tence .

In sum , desp i te res idua l prohib it ions that ins isted on humani ty 's elevated p lace in the universe and a m idd le-class readership that dis l iked ug l iness and " immora l i ty , " urban Ame r i ca and the depopu la ted hin ter lands proved to be fertile ground for rea l ist ic literary technique s and natura l ist ic ideas , though the ideas were incons istent ly app l ied and the documen ta ry technique s were cross-cu t by other literary strateg ies . Ou t s ide of l iterature , the nat ion 's found ing pr incip le of equa l ity con tras ted to the harsh rea l it ies of coun try and urban life, to the lives of African Ame r i can s , As ian Ame r i can s , Na t ive Amer i can s , women , and m inor it ies , for examp l e , and m ad e for increas ing recep t iveness to narrat ives that held a look ing g lass up to the m idd le c lass and ob l iged them to see how the other ha l f—o f themselve s and o the r s — lived.

R E G IO N A L W R I T I N G

Reg iona l writing, ano ther express ion of the rea l ist ic impu l se , resu l ted from the des ire bo th to preserve dist inct ive ways of life be fore industr ia l izat ion

1 2 3 2 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 6 5 - 1 9 1 4

d ispersed or homogenized them and to come to terms with the harsh rea l it ies that seemed to rep lace these early and a l legedly happ ier t imes . At a more prac t ica l level, much of the writing was a re spon se to the rap id growth of magaz ine s , which crea ted a new , largely fema le marke t for short fiction a long with correlated oppor tuni t ies for women wr iters. By the end of the century , in any ca se , virtually every reg ion of the country , from Ma i ne to Ca l i fornia, from the northern p la ins to the Lou i s iana bayou s , had its " loca l color is t " (the imp l ied compar i son is to pa in ters of so-ca l led genre scene s ) to immorta l ize its dist inct ive natura l , socia l , and l ingu ist ic fea tures . Though often su f fused with nos ta lg ia, the bes t work of the reg iona l ists both renders a convincing sur face of a part icu lar t ime and locat ion and invest igates psycholog ica l char-ac ter traits from a more universal perspec t ive . Thi s me lange may be seen in such an early examp le of reg iona l , a lso ca l led loca l-color , writing a s Bret Harte 's " The Lu ck of Roar ing C a m p , " which made Har te a nat iona l celebrity in 1868 . The story is locally specif ic ( though it lacked true ver is im i l itude) as well a s en terta ining, and it crea ted mythic types as well a s dep ic t ions of frontier charac ter that were later ca l led into que s t ion by Piatt and Wool son , among o thers .

Ham l in Ga r land , rather than crea t ing a myth , set out to destroy one . L ike so many other writers of the t ime , Ga r land was encou raged by Howells to write abou t what he knew be s t— in this ca se the b leak and exhau s t ing life of farmers of the upper M idwe s t . As he later sa id , his pu rpo se in wr it ing his early stor ies was to show that the "mys t ic qua l ity connec ted with free land . . . was a my th . " Gar land ' s farmers are no longer the vigorous , sen suou s , and thoughtfu l yeomen dep ic ted in Crevecoeur ' s Letters from an American Far-mer ( 1 7 8 2 ) but ben t , drab figures rem iniscen t of the protest poe t Edwin Ma rkham ' s "M an with a Hoe " ( 1 8 9 9 ) . In " Unde r the L ion 's Paw , " from the collect ion Main-Travelled Roads ( 1 8 9 1 ) , we see loca l color not a s nosta lg ia but a s rea l ism in the service of socia l protest .

The work of Harr iet Beeche r S towe , S a rah O rne Jewe t t , Mary E . Wilk ins F reeman , Su i S in Far , and Con s t ance Fen imo re Wool son may be seen a s an invitation to con s ider the world from the perspec t ive of women awakening to , pro tes t ing aga ins t , and offer ing a lternat ives for a wor ld dom ina ted by men and ma le interests and va lue s . Mary Aust in was a l so a fem inist and much of her writing, includ ing her class ic Land of Little Rain ( 1 9 0 3 ) , invites readers to see the world from a woman ' s perspec t ive . Bu t Aus t in 's larger cla im on literary history is that she made the deser t s of sou thern Ca l i fornia pa lpab le for the first t ime in l iterature . The marg ina l charac ter s who peop le this inhos-p itab le terrain canno t be imag ined a s ex ist ing anywhere else . S towe , Jewe t t , F reeman , and Wool son do more than lamen t the pos twar econom i c and spiritual decl ine of New Eng land ; their fema l e charac ter s sugge s t the capac -ity of human beings to live independen t ly and with dignity in the f ace of communi ty pre s sure s , patr iarcha l power over women , inc lud ing women art-ists and writers, and mater ia l depr ivat ion . Toge the r with A l ice Brown of New Hamp shi re and Ro se Terry Cook of Connec t i cu t— to men t ion only two oth-e r s — the se reg iona l writers crea ted not only p lace s but theme s that have a s sumed increas ing impor tance in the twent ieth century .

Ka te Chop in , not unlike Ma rk Twa in , may be though t of as a reg iona l writer interested in preserving the cu s tom s , language , and land scape s of a reg ion of the Sou th . Certa inly we have no better record of the an tebe l lum

I N T R O D U C T I O N / 1 2 3 3

lower M i s s i s s ipp i River Valley than Twa in provided in Adventures of Huck-leberry Finn and Life on the Mississippi, and Chop in ' s short stor ies and her novel The Awakening p ick up , a lmo s t literally, where Twa in 's books leave off— in the northern Lou i s iana coun trys ide and , downriver , in New O r l ean s .

Chop in began her writing career only after she re turned to S t . Lou i s from her long so journ in Lou i s iana , and in some mea su re her narrat ives are t inged with persona l nos ta lg ia for a more relaxed and sen suou s way of life than peop le in Amer ica ' s rapidly growing cities cou ld any longer provide . As an urban outs ider , Chop in was perhap s all the more sens it ive to the nuance s of Lou i s iana country life in part icu lar . Perhap s , too , a s a woman , a way of life that cen tered a round fam i l ies and sma l l communi t i e s lent itself to her dis-tinctive form of reg iona l ism . In any ca se , her trea tmen t of the C reo le s , C a jun s , and b lacks of New Or l ean s and Na tch i toche s (Nak i tu sh ) Par ish pro-vide fine examp le s of the literary portrayal of a dist inct ive reg i on—one less severe and less repressed than the towns and villages portrayed by her New Eng land s ister reg iona l ists . And ju s t a s Twa in in Huck Finn offers thema t ic r ichness beyond the visual and aura l documen ta t i on of a t ime , a p lace and varied society , so too does Chop in , in The Awakening, give us unique acce s s to the interior life a Pro tes tan t woman wakening to her oppre s s ion s and repress ions in the context of a Ca thol ic communi ty still marked by less con-science-s tr icken O ld Wor ld a t t i tudes . Tha t Tlie Awakening a lso has served to crystallize many women ' s i s sue s of the turn of the cen tury and s ince is tes t imony to the potent ia l for reg ional rea l ism to give the lie to a t temp t s to deroga te it as a genre .

R E A L I S M A S A R G U M E N T

Dur ing these fifty years a vast body of nonf ict iona l pro se was devoted to the descr ipt ion , ana lys is , and cr it ique of socia l , econom i c , and polit ical inst itu-t ions and to the unsolved socia l prob l ems that were one con sequence of the rapid growth and change of the t ime . Women ' s rights, polit ical corrup t ion , the degrada t ion of the natura l world , econom i c inequ ity , bu s ine s s decep -t ions , the exploitat ion of labo r— the se became the sub jec t s of art icles and books by a long list of journa l i s t s , his tor ians , socia l cr it ics , and econom i s t s . Mu ch of this writing had literary amb i t ion s , survives as l iterature , and con-t inues to have genu ine power . Char lo t te Perk ins G i lman ' s " The Yellow Wa l l-paper , " for examp le , may have been written to keep women from going crazy under the su f foca t ing cond i t ions that wou ld d isa l low women full equa l ity and full part icipat ion in the creat ive , econom i c , and polit ica l life of the nat ion ; but unlike mere p ropaganda it has res isted all a t temp t s to turn it into a s ing le Wes tern Union me s s a ge . In fact , the more it has been read the more meanings it has yielded . S imi lar ly , in one of the mos t amb i t iou s Amer i can works of mora l instruct ion , The Education of Henry Adams ( 1 9 1 8 ) , Adam s reg isters through a literary sensibility a sophi s t ica ted histor ian 's sen se of what we now recognize a s the d isor ien ta t ion that accompan ie s rap id and con t inuou s change . T o pu t the ca se for Adam s ' s book in con temporary terms , Adam s invented the idea of future shock . The result is one of the mos t essent ia l books of and abou t the whole per iod .

O f all the issues of the day , perhap s the mo s t pers is ten t and res istant to

1 2 3 4 / A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 6 5 - 1 9 1 4

solu t ion was the fact of racial inequa l ity . Severa l selec t ions in this an thology addre s s the long, shame fu l history of white in just ices to b lack Ame r i can s , but two works by b lack writers and leaders from the turn of the cen tury have a specia l cla im on our a t ten t ion : the widely adm ired au tob iography of Booker T . Washing ton , Upfront Slavery ( 1 9 0 0 ) and the richly imag ined The Souls of Black Folk ( 1 9 0 3 ) by W . E . B. Du Boi s , with its brilliantly a rgued re ject ion of Washing ton ' s philosophy . The W a sh in g ton -Du Boi s controversy set the major terms of the con t inu ing deba te be tween b lack leaders and in the b lack communi ty : which strateg ies will mo s t effectively has ten comp l e te equa l ity for b lacks educa t iona l ly , socially , politically , and econom ica l ly? It is a lso fair to say that in very different ways Washing ton ' s Upfront Slavery and Du Bois 's Souls of Black Folk—admirable literary achievemen t s in themselves-—ant i-c ipa ted a tide of b lack literary produc t ion that con t inue s with great force to the presen t day . One cou ld a lso argue that the though t and language of Washing ton and Du Boi s are everywhere to be felt in the though t and lan-gua ge of the d is t ingu ished line of b lack thinkers , wr iters, and art ists who followed them .

Two other ma jor writers of the t ime are Wa l t Whi tman and Em i ly Dick-inson . The se poe t s , who se roots are in the an tebe l lum per iod , con t inued their work into the 1 8 8 0 s . Though their in f luence wou ld be felt mo s t strong ly after Wor ld Wa r II , in hinds igh t they can be seen a s the foun ta inhead s of two ma jor stra ins in mode rn poetry : the expans ive , gregar ious form of the self-celebratory Whi tman and the conc i se , compac t expre s s ion s of the rad-ically private Dick in son .

In the ha l f cen tury we have been cons ider ing, ma ter ia l , intellectua l , socia l , and psycholog ica l change s in the lives of many Ame r i can s went forward at such ex treme speed and on such a mass ive sca l e tha t the enormou s ly d iverse writing of the t ime reg is ters , at its core , degree s of shocked recogni t ion o f the human con sequence s of the se rad ica l tran s forma t ion s . Some t ime s the shock is expre s sed in recoil and den ia l— thu s the per s i s tence , in the f ace of the os tens ib le tr iumph of rea l i sm , of the l iterature of d ivers ion : nos ta lg ic poetry , sen t imen ta l and me lodrama t i c d rama , and swashbuck l ing histor ica l novels . The more endur ing fictional and nonf ict iona l pro se forms of the era, however , come to terms imag inat ively with the individual and collect ive dis-loca t ions and d iscon t inu i t ies a s soc ia ted with the clos ing ou t of the frontier , urbaniza t ion , intensified secu lar i sm , unp receden ted imm igra t ion , the surge of nat iona l wea lth unequa l ly d is tr ibu ted , revised concep t ion s of hum an na ture and dest iny , the reorder ing of family and civil life, and the pervas ive spread of mechanica l and organiza t iona l technolog ie s .

A M E R I C A N L I T E R A T U R E 1 8 6 5 - 1 9 1 4

T E X T S C O N T E X T S

1855 W a l t W h i tm a n , Leaves of Grass

1860—65 Em i l y D i c k i n s o n w r i t e s s e v e r a l

h u n d r e d poems 1865 T h i r t e e n t h Am e n d m e n t a b o l i s h e s

s l ave ry • L i n c o l n a s s a s s i n a t e d •

R e c o n s t r u c t i o n b e g i n s

1867 U n i t e d S t a t e s p u r c h a s e s A l a s k a f r om

R u s s i a

1868 F o u r t e e n t h Am e n d m e n t g r a n t s

A f r i c an Am e r i c a n s c i t i z e n sh i p

1869 B r e t H a r t e , "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"

1869 N a t i o n a l W o m a n S u f f r a g e

A s s o c i a t i o n f o u n d e d • first t r a n s c o n t i n e n t a l

r a i l r o ad c om p l e t e d ; C e n t r a l P a c i f i c

c o n s t r u c t i o n c r ew s c om p o s e d l a r g e l y o f

C h i n e s e l a b o r e r s

1871 S a r a h M o r g a n P i a t t , A Woman's

Poems

1872 C o c h i s e , "[I am alone]" 1872 Y e l l ow s t on e , first U . S . n a t i on a l p a r k ,

e s t a b l i s h e d

1876 C h a r i o t , "[He has filled g r a v e s with our bones]"

1876 G e n e r a l C u s t e r d e f e a t e d by S i o u x

a n d C h e y e n n e a t L i t t l e B i g h o r n R i v e r •

A l e x a n d e r G r a h am B e l l in v en t s th e

t e l e p h o n e

1877 R e c o n s t r u c t i o n e n d s ; s e g r e g a t i on i s t

J i m C r ow l aw s in s t i t u t e d

1878 H e n r y J am e s , Daisy Miller

1879 T h om a s E d i s o n in v en t s th e e l e c t r i c

l i gh t bu l b

1880-1910 Va s t i mm i g r a t i o n f r om

E u r o p e ; U . S . p o p u l a t i o n in 1900 i s f o u r t e e n

t i m e s g r e a t e r t h a n in 1800

1880 C o n s t a n c e F e n i m o r e W o o l s o n ,

"Miss G r i e f

1881 J o e l C h a n d l e r H a r r i s , " T h e

W o n d e r f u l T a r - B a b y S t o r y "

1882 J . D . R o c k e f e l l e r o r g a n i z e s S t a n d a r d

Oi l T r u s t • C h i n e s e E x c l u s i o n A c t

1884 M a r k Tw a i n ( S am u e l L . C l e m e n s ) ,

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn • W . D .

H ow e l l s , The Rise of Silas Lapham

1886 S a r a h O r n e J ew e t t , " A White Heron"

1886 S t a t u e o f L i b e r t y d e d i c a t e d

1887 G e n e r a l A l l o tme n t A c t ( D aw e s A c t )

p a s s e d to r e d i s t r i bu t e t r i b a d y h e l d l a n d b a s e

1889 H am l i n G a r l a n d , " U n d e r th e L i on ' s

P aw "

1889 W o v o k a ( J a c k W i l s o n ) , a P a i u t e , h a s

v i s ion th a t in s p i r e s G h o s t D a n c e r e l i g ion

Boldface titles indicate works in the anthology.

1 2 3 5

T E X T S C O N T E X T S

1 8 9 0 Am b r o s e B i e r c e , " A n O c c u r r e n c e a t 1 8 9 0 C e n s u s B u r e a u d e c l a r e s f ron t i e r

Ow l C r e e k B r i d g e " " c l o s e d " • S e v e n t h C a v a l r y m a s s a c r e a t

W o u n d e d K n e e e n d s N a t i v e Am e r i c a n

a rm e d r e s i s t a n c e to U . S . g o v e r nm e n t • E l l i s

I s l a n d I mm i g r a t i o n S t a t i o n o p e n s

1 8 9 1 M a r y E . W i l k in s F r e e m a n , " A N e w

E n g l a n d N u n " • VVovoka , " T h e M e s s i a h

L e t t e r : C h e y e n n e V e r s i o n "

1 8 9 2 C h a r l o t t e P e r k in s O i l m a n , " T h e

Y e l l ow W a l l - p a p e r "

1 8 9 3 F r e d e r i c k J a c k s o n T u r n e r , Tlie 1 8 9 3 W o r l d ' s C o l um b i a n E x p o s i t i on h e l d

Significance of the Frontier in C h i c a g o

1 8 9 6 J am e s M o o n e y p u b l i s h e s Ghost 1 8 9 6 Plessy v. Ferguson upholds

Dance Songs s e g r e g a t e d t r a n s p o r t a t i on

1 8 9 7 S t e p h e n C r a n e , " T h e O p e n B o a t "

1 8 9 8 A b r a h am C a h a n , "The Imported 1 8 9 8 U n i t e d S t a t e s a n n e x e s H aw a i i

Bridegroom" and Other Stories of the New

York Ghetto

1 8 9 8 - 9 9 S p a n i s h -Am e r i c a n W a r

1 8 9 9 K a t e C h o p i n , The Awakening •

C h a r l e s W . C h e s n u t t , " T h e W i f e o f H i s

Y o u t h " • E d i t h W h a r t o n , " S o u l s B e l a t e d "

1 9 0 0 U . S . p o p u l a t i o n e x c e e d s s even ty - f i v e

mi l l ion

1 9 0 1 Z i tk a l a 5 a , Impressions of an Indian 1 9 0 1 J . P . M o r g a n f o u n d s U . S . S t e e l

Childhood • T h e o d o r e D r e i s e r , "O l d R o g a um C o r p o r a t i o n • first t r a n s a t l a n t i c r a d i o

a n d H i s T h e r e s a " • J a c k L o n d o n , " T h e L aw

o f L i f e " • B o o k e r T . W a s h i n g t o n , Up from

Slavery

1 9 0 3 W . E . B . D u B o i s , The Souls of \90i He n r y F o r d f o u n d s F o r d M o t o r C o .

Black Folk • W a s h i n g t o n M a t t h ew s e d i t s • Wr i gh t b r o t h e r s m a k e th e first s u c c e s s f u l

The Night Chant: A Navajo Ceremony a i r p l a n e f l igh t • Tlie Great Train Robbery is

first U . S . c i n em a t i c n a r r a t i v e

1 9 0 5 In du s t r i a l W o r k e r s o f th e W o r l d

f o u n d e d

1 9 0 7 J o h n M . O s k i s o n , " T h e P r o b l e m o f

O l d H a r j o " • He n r y A d am s , Tlie Education

of Henry Adams

1 9 0 9 N a t i o n a l A s s o c i a t i o n for th e

A d v a n c e m e n t o f C o l o r e d P e o p l e ( N A A C P )

f o u n d e d

1 9 1 0 F r a n c e s D e n sm o r e , Chippewa

Songs • S u i S i n F a r , " M r s . S p r i n g

F r a g r a n c e "

1 9 1 4 P a n am a C a n a l o p e n

1 9 1 6 C h a r l e s A l e x a n d e r E a s tm a n

(O h i y e s a ) , From the Deep Woods to

Civilization Civilization

1 2 3 6