What Hath God Wrought (132 page)

Writings about the Transcendentalists are voluminous and mostly by literary scholars rather than historians; I mention here only a few that have most influenced me. Barbara Packer gives a superb general account: “The Transcendentalists,” in
The Cambridge History of American Literature
, vol. II, ed. Sacvan Bercovitch (1995). Lawrence Buell,
New England Literary Culture from Revolution Through Renaissance
(1986) is indispensable; Francis Otto Matthiessen,
American Renaissance
(1941), an enduring classic. Perry Miller’s great anthology
The Transcendentalists
(1950) should now be supplemented with that of Joel Myerson,
Transcendentalism
(2001). Charles Capper and Conrad Edick Wright, eds.,
Transient and Permanent
(1999) is an outstanding essay collection. For the Transcendentalists as social rebels, see Anne Rose,
Transcendentalism as a Social Movement
(1981); Albert von Frank,
The Trials of Anthony Burns
(1998); and
Emerson’s Antislavery Writings
, ed. Len Gougeon and Joel Myerson (1994). For their complex attitude toward the market revolution, see Richard Teichgraeber,
Sublime Thoughts/Penny Wisdom
(1995).

Robert Richardson Jr. has written two excellent intellectual biographies:
Henry Thoreau
(1986) and
Emerson
(1995). See also Lawrence Buell,
Emerson
(2003); Mary Cayton,
Emerson’s Emergence
(1989); and Peter Field,
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(2002). Charles Capper’s two-volume biography
Margaret Fuller
(1992 and 2007) is detailed and fascinating; for more on Fuller’s relationship to feminism, see Tiffany Wayne,
Woman Thinking
(2005). So far we have only the first volume of the giant two-volume biography of Theodore Parker: Dean Grodzins,
American Heretic
(2002). Norman Risjord,
Representative Americans: The Romantics
(2001) interprets the American Renaissance broadly.

The perfectibility of human nature was a central tenet of the American Renaissance. Self-improvement projects are illustrated in Daniel Howe,
Making the American Self
(1997) and Angela Ray,
The Lyceum and Public Culture in the Nineteenth-Century United States
(2005). For black people’s self-improvement, see Heather Williams,
Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom
(2005) and Elizabeth McHenry,
Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies
(2002). On educating the most severely handicapped, see Ernest Freeberg,
The Education of Laura Bridgman
(2001) and Elisabeth Gitter,
The Imprisoned Guest
(2001). For Dorothea Dix’s campaign to reform the treatment of the insane, see David Gollaher,
Voice for the Mad
(1995) and Thomas Brown,
Dorothea Dix
(1998). Stephen Rice,
Minding the Machine
(2004) interprets the ethos of self-improvement as a strategem to sustain the authority of the middle class against the working class.

Works on the American literary Renaissance are too numerous to do more than suggest some of its ramifications. William Charvat’s
Literary Publishing in America
(1959) and
The Profession of Authorship in America
(1968) defined their subjects. More recent treatments of literary culture include Michael Gilmore,
American Romanticism and the Marketplace
(1985); Mary Kelley,
Private Woman, Public Stage
(1984); David Reynolds,
Walt Whitman’s America
(New York, 1995); Rosalind Remer,
Printers and Men of Capital
(1996); Meredith McGill,
American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting
(2003); Ronald Zboray,
A Fictive People
(1993); and Ronald Zboray and Mary Zboray,
Literary Dollars and Social Sense
(2005). The rise of the novel is discussed in Nina Baym,
Novels, Readers, and Reviewers
(1984); Michael Denning,
Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working Class Culture in America
(1987); David Reynolds,
Beneath the American Renaissance
(1988); and Cathy Davidson,
Revolution and the Word
, 2nd ed. (2004). For the connection between literature and social reform, see, for example, Jane Tompkins,
Sensational Designs
(1985) and Carolyn Karcher’s biography of Maria Child,
First Woman in the Republic
(1998).

On the theater in the young republic, see John Kasson,
Rudeness and Civility
(1990); Lawrence Levine,
Highbrow/Lowbrow
(1988); Susan Porter,
With an Air Debonair
(1991); and Nigel Cliff,
The Shakespeare Riots
(2007). Minstrel shows have a substantial bibliography of their own; see Ken Emerson,
Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture
(1998); Robert Toll,
Blacking Up
(1974); Eric Lott,
Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class
(1993); and William Mahar,
Behind the Burnt Cork Mask
(1999).

The Cambridge History of American Music
, ed. David Nicholls (1998) contains judicious essays on this period. For the music of the slaves, see, in addition to works on black culture cited earlier, Eileen Southern,
The Music of Black Americans
, 2nd ed. (1983) and Dena Epstein,
Sinful Tunes and Spirituals
(1977). Shane White and Graham White,
The Sounds of Slavery
(2005) includes recordings. The hymns of white Christians are discussed in Henry Wilder Foote,
Three Centuries of American Hymnody
(1940) and Peter Benes, ed.,
New England Music: The Public Sphere
(1998).

The abolitionists are heroes to most Americans nowadays, and an extremely large body of writing pays tribute to them; what follows is a highly selective sample of it. An excellent overview is James B. Stewart,
Holy Warriors
, rev. ed. (1997). See also Stanley Harrold,
American Abolitionists
(2001); Lawrence Friedman,
Gregarious Saints
(1982); and Edward Magdol,
The Antislavery Rank and File
(1986). Two essay collections are Timothy McCarthy and John Stauffer, eds.,
Prophets of Protest
(2006) and Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman, eds.,
Antislavery Reconsidered
(1979). Simon Schama,
Rough Crossings
(2006) and David Brion Davis,
Inhuman Bondage
(2006) put antislavery into its international context. The best biography of Garrison is Henry Mayer,
All on Fire
(1998); for Weld, see Robert Abzug,
Passionate Liberator
(1980). Frederick Blue,
No Taint of Compromise
(2005) and Bruce Laurie,
Beyond Garrison
(2005) celebrate the political abolitionists. The growing militancy of the abolitionists is treated in Merton Dillon,
Slavery Attacked
(1990) and Stanley Harrold,
The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism
(2004). Three historians argue about the relationship between abolitionism and capitalism in the difficult but rewarding volume entitled
The Antislavery Debate
, ed. Thomas Bender (1992).

On the schism within the abolition movement, see Aileen Kraditor,
Means and Ends in American Abolitionism
(1969); Bertram Wyatt-Brown,
Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War Against Slavery
(1971); and John McKivigan,
The War Against Proslavery Religion
(1984). For women’s resistance to the schism, see Julie Jeffrey,
The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism
(1998).

Benjamin Quarles,
Black Abolitionists
(1969) remains useful. Particular aspects of black antislavery are covered in John Stauffer,
The Black Hearts of Men
(2002) and John Ernest,
Liberation Historiography
(2004). Bruce Dain’s book on race theory,
A Hideous Monster of the Mind
(2002), sheds light on African American abolitionism. A large body of writing on Frederick Douglass includes Nathan Huggins,
Slave and Citizen
(1980); William McFeely,
Frederick Douglass
(1991); and Waldo Martin Jr.,
The Mind of Frederick Douglass
(1984). Nell Painter,
Sojourner Truth
(1996) is judicious.

For abolitionist feminism, see Gerda Lerner,
The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina,
rev. ed. (2004); Blanche Hersh,
The Slavery of Sex
(1978); Jean Yellin,
Women and Sisters
(1989); Jean Yellin and John Van Horne, eds.,
The Abolitionist Sisterhood
(1994); Nancy Hardesty,
Women Called to Witness
, 2nd ed. (1999); Anna Speicher,
The Religious World of Antislavery Women
(2000); and Kathryn Sklar,
Women’s Rights Emerges Within the Anti-Slavery Movement
(2000). Michael Pierson connects the subject to party politics in
Free Hearts and Free Homes
(2003). For the transatlantic dimension, see Clare Midgley,
Women Against Slavery
(1992), 121–53, and Kathryn Sklar and James B. Stewart, eds.,
Women’s Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery
(2007).

On efforts to aid escaping slaves, see Thomas Morris,
Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws
(1974); Stanley Harrold,
The Abolitonists and the South
(1995); David Blight, ed.,
Passages to Freedom
(2004); and Fergus Bordewich,
Bound for Canaan
(2005).

There are many books on the Texan Revolution; what follows is a highly selective list emphasizing recent works. The authoritative military history is now Stephen Hardin,
Texian Iliad
(1994). For other aspects, see Gregg Cantrell,
Stephen F. Austin, Empresario of Texas
(1999); James Crisp, “Race, Revolution, and the Texas Republic,” in
The Texas Military Experience
, ed. Joseph Dawson (1995), 32–48; Paul Lack,
The Texas Revolutionary Experience
(1992); Sam Haynes,
Soldiers of Misfortune: The Somervell and Mier Expeditions
(1990); Andreas Reichstein,
Rise of the Lone Star
, trans. Jeanne Willson (1989); Margaret Henson,
Juan Davis Bradburn
(1982); and Paul Hogan,
The Texas Republic
(1969). The Alamo has of course attracted particular attention: see Randy Roberts and James Olson,
A Line in the Sand
(2001); William C. Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
(1998); Timothy Matovina,
The Alamo Remembered: Tejano Accounts and Perspectives
(1995). Lelia Roeckell, “British Interests in Texas, 1825–1846” (D.Phil. Thesis, Oxford University, 1993) is the most thorough treatment of its subject; for background, see also David Turley,
The Culture of English Antislavery, 1780–1860
(1991). The expulsion of the Indian tribes by Anglo settlers is the theme of Gary Anderson,
The Conquest of Texas
(2005).

Historical treatments of American imperialism in the 1840s range from celebratory to sternly critical. See William Weeks,
Building the Continental Empire
(1996); Thomas Hietala,
Manifest Design
(1985); Shomer Zwelling,
Expansion and Imperialism
(1970); Frederick Merk,
The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism
(1966); William Goetzman,
When the Eagle Screamed
(1966); Reginald Horsman,
Race and Manifest Destiny
(1981); Sam Haynes and Christopher Morris, eds.,
Manifest Destiny and Empire
(1997); Robert F. May,
Manifest Destiny’s Underworld
(2002); and Linda Hudson,
Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau
(2001). Concise biographies of the leading expansionist are Thomas Leonard,
James K. Polk
(2001); Sam Haynes,
James K. Polk
, 3rd ed. (2006); and John Seigenthaler,
James K. Polk
(2003). Edward Crapol,
John Tyler, the Accidental President
(2006) emphasizes his role as an expansionist.

A vivid account of the process of Texas annexation is in William Freehling,
The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay
(1990), 353–452. David Pletcher,
The Diplomacy of Annexation
(1973) is detailed and solid. Frederick Merk,
Slavery and the Annexation of Texas
(1972), like everything by that meticulous historian, is still valuable. For a narrative, see Richard Winders,
Crisis in the Southwest: The United States, Mexico, and the Struggle over Texas
(2002). Joel Silbey,
Storm over Texas
(2004), treats annexation’s impact on U.S. party politics.