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as we know it

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2.2 Native Americans: Period Characteristics

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2.2 Native Americans: Period Characteristics

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Native Americans were also called Paleo-Indians. They used Clovis points and fluted stone tools to hunt massive Ice Age animals like mammoths, they are some of the earliest evidence of human activity in North America.

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Indigenous peoples of the Americas - Prehistoric Farming, Agriculture, Cultures | Britannica

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Indigenous peoples of the Americas - Prehistoric Farming, Agriculture, Cultures: In much of Northern America, the transition from the hunting, gathering, and incipient plant use of the Archaic eventually developed into a fully agricultural way of life. In the lush valleys east of the Mississippi River, societies grew increasingly dependent upon plants such as amaranth, sumpweed, sunflower, and squash; their plentiful seeds and flesh provided a rich and ready source of food. Many of these plants were eventually domesticated: sumpweed by approximately 3500 bce and squash and sunflowers by about 3000 bce. By perhaps 500 bce the production of these local cultigens had become the economic foundation upon which the

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Most Native American lands today are held in trust by the U.S government as reservations, which serve as permanent tribal homelands where Native nations can exercise sovereignty and support their communities through land-based activities.

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Policy and Laws

What is the Allotment Act?

The General Allotment Act of 1887 (The Dawes Act) provided that the president, at his discretion, could allot (divide up) reservation land to Indians, with the title to be held in trust by the United States for twenty-five years. This law mandated the conversion of Indian lands that tribes previously held in common into small parcels open to individual ownership. It granted that full citizenship for Indians would accompany the allotment, and conferred citizenship upon two classes of Indians born within the limits of the United States: Indians to whom land allotments were made and Indians who had voluntarily taken up residence separate from any Indian tribe and who adopted the "habits of civilized life." Besides these two categories of Indians, Indian women who married citizens could become citizens beginning in 1880, and under the Act of November 1919, Congress made all Indian veterans who served in World War I U.S. citizens.

When were Native Americans granted U.S. citizenship?

Under the Indian Citizen Act (1924), all Indians born in the United States were declared citizens of the United States. By then, two-thirds of Indian people (women who married U.S. citizens, for example) had gained citizenship through laws enacted during the previous fifty years, such as the Allotment Act.

What is the Indian Reorganization Act?

In 1934, Congress passed the Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) to secure rights for Native Americans on reservations, ending the policy of allotment. Its main provisions were to restore to Native Americans management of their assets (mostly land), to prevent further depletion of reservations' resources, to build a sound economic foundation for Indian people on reservations, and to return local self-government to Native American tribes.

What is the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978?

This act states the policy of the United States to "protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the traditional religions of the American Indian, Eskimo, Aleut, and Native Hawaiians, including but not limited to access to sites, use and possession of sacred objects, and the freedom to worship through ceremonial and traditional rites." The American Indian Religious Freedom Act is an important legal protection for Native rights to religious expression.

What is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)?

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990), or NAGPRA, is a federal law that provides a process for museums and federal agencies to return certain Native American cultural items, human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to lineal descendants, culturally affiliated Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations. It empowers tribes to claim their human remains and cultural items from federal collections and non-Smithsonian museums.

How and why are Native arts protected?

The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 is a truth-in-advertising law that prohibits misrepresentation in the marketing of Indian arts and craft products within the United States. It makes it illegal to offer, display for sale, or sell any art or craft product "in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian tribe or Indian arts and craft organization, resident within the United States."

What is the Canadian Indian Act of 1876?

This is the Canadian federal legislation, first passed in 1876, that sets out certain federal government obligations and regulates the management of Indian reserved lands. The act has been amended several times, most recently in 1985. The Canadian constitution recognizes three groups of aboriginal people-Indian, Métis, and Inuit.

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Native Knowledge 360° | Frequently Asked Questions

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Native Knowledge 360° is the National Museum of the American Indian's national initiative to inspire and promote improvement of teaching and learning about American Indians. Check out the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions by educators and students at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

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Bible Gateway passage: Genesis 11:1-9 - New International Version

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The Tower of Babel - Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said,…

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3.2 Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American colonies 1600-1800: Period Characteristics

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3.2 Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American colonies 1600-1800: Period Characteristics

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1. Wrote mostly diaries and histories, which expressed the connections between God and their everyday lives.
2. South to "purify" the Church of England by reforming to the simpler forms of worship and church organization described in the New Testament.
3. Saw religion as a personal, inner experience.
4. Believed in original sin and "elect" who would be saved.
5. Used a plain style of writing.

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3.2 Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American" colonies 1600-1800: Authors and Works

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3.2 Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American" colonies 1600-1800: Authors and Works

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Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American" colonies 1600-1800: Fact #1

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Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American" colonies 1600-1800: Fact #1

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In 1647 the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted the "Old Deluder Satan Act". requiring towns with 50% or more families to hire a schoolteacher, and towns with 100% or more families to support a grammar school, they were aiming for widespread literacy so that everyone could read the Bible and resist ignorance.

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Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American" colonies 1600-1800: Fact #2

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Puritanism and Early Settlement of First "American" colonies 1600-1800: Fact #2

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This painting is an idealized vision of the “first Thanksgiving” between Native Americans and Pilgrims, while the second is a look at one of the punishments inflicted by the Puritans upon those who broke their rules.

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Colonial Cultures

Jim Ross-Nazzal, PhD and Students

"The sermons of the seventeenth century were the very essence of America." -Perry Miller on orthodoxy in America - The New England Mind
PILGRIMS OR PURITANS?
Assertion of Liberty of Conscience by the Independents of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, 1644
CALVINISM
Just an oh so brief refresher of who was who so you do not confuse them at your next dinner party or cocktail event. First, Pilgrims settled Plymouth in 1620. Many arrived aboard the Mayflower. Pilgrims believed the Anglican church was corrupt to the extent that the church could not be fixed and thus they sought to completely break away from the Church of England. Puritans, on the other hand, showed up after the Pilgrims and established the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 1630s. The most famous of the ships that brought Puritans to British colonial North America was the Arbella. Puritans believed that breaking away from the Catholic church was a good first step, but that the Anglican church needed to divorce itself of all aspects of Catholicism. So, Puritans sought to reform the Church of England. The first painting is an idealized vision of the "first Thanksgiving" between Native Americans and Pilgrims, while the second is a look at one of the punishments inflicted by the Puritans upon those who broke their rules. The Puritans had a long list, some would say an entire alphabet of sins, such as "A" for adultery. Or in this case, is found to be a witch (1690s).
Orthodoxy in America - The New England Mind
The Pilgrims will not play a major role in the rest of the story so we will focus on the Puritans, which means we have to take a big step back to the Reformation and a fellow named John Calvin. Once upon a time, there was only one official type of Christianity. Then a German religious leader questioned the papacy's roles in a whole bunch of ways setting off a civil war among the Germanic principalities. the war spread throughout Europe. One result was the manifestation of numerous types of Christianity, some more important to our story than others. One of the former was eventually called Calvinism established by John Calvin (he did not name the theology after himself). John Calvin preached that humans were inherently depraved but that a few would get into heaven -what he called the Elect. He preached that people could not earn or buy their way into heaven, rather God had predetermined who would get in. There was no sign, no indication who was predestined by God, but everyone was supposed to act as if they were. People had certain obligations towards each other, such as the covenant. Calvin believed that there existed a relationship between God and humanity. Humans promised to abide by God's rules and God promised not to kill everyone prematurely and send them into Hell. Of course, breaking any of God's rules could get that person cast into the fiery pit. So, they learned to read so they could know for themselves about God's rules, which Calvin said were in their Christian literature. Every aspect of their lives was supposed to revolve around their Bible. If it wasn't in the Bible, then they were not supposed to do it. So, slavery was OK but celebrating Christmas was no good.
Reformation
Puritans who came to New England were already Congregationalists (self-governing) possibly even introducing Anglicanism to the colony and answered the question "What are we doing here?" Puritan culture spread throughout the country. New England 'Yankees" simply were adhering to certain Puritan traditions such as the work ethic and independence. The Puritan worldview was a program of "self-scrutiny to save oneself."

When Henry VIII in the 1530s repudiated the pope's authority, some were already listening to Martin Luther while others adhered to the teaching of John Calvin. In 1536 Calvin published "The Institutes of the Christian Religion that taught several doctrines:

1. Everyone was dammed due to original sin

2. Some "elect" were chosen to be saved (predestination)

Calvin's ideas were more popular in England than Luther's. So, the Puritan movement grew through Henry's heirs (except for Mary, of course.). Some were orthodox: Presbyterians (sought to slightly change church structure, Sine were reformers who wanted much change but were not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And then there were Congregationalists (Separatists) who sought to do away with established church hierarchy and allow each church to govern itself by Calvinist doctrine.
Glorious Revolution (1688)
Charles I (and his supporters) tried to chase the Puritans out of England. About 14,000 migrated to Massachusetts, 30,000 to the Caribbean, and 8,000 to Virginia. And many returned when civil war broke out in England.
PURITANS
William and Mary were put on the English throne in a bloodless revolution ('glorious" for protestants, not so much for England's Catholics). Remember, aboard the Arbela, John Winthrop, Sr. gave his impassioned speech as to why his Puritan followers were in New England. His City on the Hill speech answered the question "What are we doing here?" The Puritans who settled in Massachusetts were what we would consider today to be middle class. Their ministers sought safe places to serve God and Puritans were fearful for their children's souls in England. The Puritans focused on three things: Faith, Good Works, and the Conversion Experience.

Calvin's theology spread and as ideas do, his ideas changed to meet the needs of the local social and political realities. And that brings us to the Puritans. The Puritans were Calvinists. They believed the Devil walked among them and tried to get them to break God's rules in the hopes that God would kill them and cast them into Hell where the Devil would have more souls to mess with. Although their lives had to be biblically based, the family was seen as a covenant which meant any member of the family that broke a law could mean disaster for the whole family. The eldest male, usually dad, was the paterfamilias. He called all the shots, including "sentencing" any of his own kids to death. Better off a kid than risk losing the whole family. No premarital sex, no spousal abuse, no child abuse, and divorce was fine. Marriage was a social contract, not a religious one and so there was no stigma to getting divorced. Before getting married the parties would discuss their wants. They would write them down and sign them,. not unlike a contract. If either party broke the contract, that would be grounds for divorce. But there was tremendous anxiety: anyone could be turned against the society by the Devil, who was very real and very active in the lives of the community members, spelling instant damnation (which was especially concerning to those in town who were successful as some saw success as a possible sign that they had won the favor of God). Well, you can only live under so much pressure before snapping and we call that snapping the witchcraft craze of the 18th century or, the dark side of Puritanism. In a nutshell:

Humans are completely depraved.

Only the elect will be saved.

Election was totally unconditional upon action.

If you enjoyed the grace of God, you had many demanding and exacting obligations to pay back to the community.

The 'true saints' would persevere (the saints could be identified as economically successful who had great revelation of God).
SOCIAL LIFE OF PURITANS
God and humans had a covenant thus humans had to be careful who lived in their community. Roger Williams, for example, was expelled, also Anne Hutchinson, fearing their actions could incur God's wrath upon the community.

They were far more literate than other colonists because they needed to read the bible to determine God's rules and regulations without an intermediary.

They migrated as families (as opposed to single men who migrated to Virginia).

Climate and geography in New England discouraged slavery, but the Puritans were not against slavery.

They were conservative: maintain old ways; new ideas and innovation were bad. Some refer to this as cultural anxiety, which resulted in New England is almost frozen in time politically, socially, and economically.

The family was a covenanted association; they agreed to certain obligations to each other as well as the family to God. The community had a stake in the health of the family unit (the core of Puritanism in the colonies). Thus, the community was a bunch of busybodies. At one time, there was even a government agency established to monitor families such as ensuring that children were being treated well and that people were not living alone (the Devil could better influence people living outside of traditional family units). Sin and inequity were the companions of the solitary life.
WITCHES
The father was the head of the family (the paterfamilias if you would) and sons over the age of 16 could be put to death for not listening to their fathers. Marriage was not a religious practice but a civil contract. Thus Puritans allowed divorce because if either part broke their marriage contract divorce would be sought by the offended party and allowed by the community. Married women could own property and were protected against spousal abuse. Marriage should be a love match and the marriage contract was hammered out through the act of bundling. Both parties would be punished for adultery (both wore the "scarlet letter") and premarital sex was prohibited.

The Puritans have been under a lot of pressure ever since John Winthrop Sr. gave his Modell of Christian Charity speech aboard the Arbella, suggesting that if they do not build the greatest city of all times, God will not be pleased. So that, and their belief in the Devil and the paterfamilias, resulted in the creation of a community of busybodies. But over time those Bible-based rules went to the wayside, church attendance dropped, women started to lie alone (that was a BIG no-no) and were not transferring their property to the eldest male in their families, and other societal rules or obligations.

In John Winthrop's City on the Hill Speech, he convinced his followers that the Devil walked among them. He could appear in any form and he tried to get you to do his bidding to affect your status before God. The Devil likes to particularly target those who he belied were predetermined to go to heaven. This community of busybodies watched each other for signs that their neighbors were being controlled by the Devil, believing it was their Christian duty to fetter out evil in society and that evil was all around them. People can only live under so much anxiety before they crack and that cracking is known as the witchcraft craze.

Women were largely the target population and Catholics and Anglicans jumped on the bandwagon, thus spreading the fettering out of withes throughout the British colonies in the seventeenth century.

Although Salem is the most commonly known witch town, the witch craze extended beyond Salem, such as in Connecticut.

Alse Young, also known as Achsah or Alice, was the first person in Windsor, Connecticut to be executed for witchcraft. She was hanged at Meeting House Square in Hartford which is now the Old State House. Young's life details, her trial, and the consequences of her accusations are unknown. On May 26, 1647, Matthew Grant confirms the execution in his diary when he wrote that Alse Young had been executed. Another case happened in 1648 with a woman named Mary Johnson, this was the first recorded confession of witchcraft in Connecticut. In 1646, Johnson was accused of theft, under the pressure of the minister and after the extended whipping, she confessed to being guilty of witchcraft. She described her crimes, including using the Devil to help her with her household chores with this she was sentenced to death.

Though the overwhelming majority of these accused of witchcraft were women, two men in Connecticut also hanged as witches: John Carrington and Nathaniel Greensmith. John Carrington died along with his wife, Joan in 1651, they were executed for having entertained familiarity with Satan, the great enemy of God and mankind, and by Satan's help, having done works above the course of human Powers. Nathaniel Greensmith was executed with his wife Rebecca during a local outbreak in 1662-63 after she confessed. Rebecca Greensmith claimed that she met up with the Devil and that her husband that he met strange creatures in the forest. Nathaniel Greensmith was sentenced to death for possessing supernatural strength, and for not having the fear of God before his eyes and with Satan's help acted way beyond human abilities.

In 1662, Connecticut's Governor John Winthrop Jr, established more objective criteria for the witch trial, requiring a minimum of two witnesses for every alleged act of witchcraft. In late March eight-year-old, Elizabeth's parents were grieving over her body in their home at Hartford. Elizabeth was well the past few days before when she had returned home with a neighbor, Goodwife Ayres. Her parents, John and Bethia Kelly, saw the hand of the devil at work, they were convinced that their daughter had been fatally possessed by Ayres. They testified that their daughter was ill the night she returned home with Ayres and that she claimed that Ayers was upon her and chokes her.

According to some of my students, Paula Aguirre, Enrique Arana, Camila Arajuo, and Isabel Caballero, women were indeed the target.

The people who were suspected in colonial New England varied from sex, age, marital status, or even just relations to someone who was being tried for showing signs of being a witch. Women were the ones mostly accused of practicing witchcraft on their neighbors or the neighbors' animals. Witches were also characterized by their age, women over the age of 40 were more likely considered witches than if they were younger than 40, "Woman under forty were, in fact, unlikely witches in puritan society." This is because women under forty were thought to still be able to get pregnant and not having much time to do witchcraft since they had a responsibility to take care of their children. Elizabeth Morse was found guilty and was punished. After spending almost, a year in prison, and after her husband had sent two petitions to the Boston magistrates, Morse was allowed to return home. Women who were not married or widowed ran the most dangerous because if they were not married, they did not have a husband or a son to protect them of suspicions and if they were widowed they had someone that protected them as long as the husband or son was alive. Not only their marital status was a factor, but also in the accused women's eco-social status and how she inherited her position.

Witches in the villages and towns of late 16th and early 17th England tended to be very poor. They were not usually the poorest of their communities, more like "moderately" poor. Some common factors that were used to find these "witches" would include property they owned, wealth, occupation, and political offices held. There was the stereotype of a witch being so poor that she would have to beg for her life. But in New England, there was evidence that women from every social class were at danger of being accused of being a witch. For instance, wives, daughters, and widows of "middling" farmers, artisans, and mariners were regularly accused. Now when it came down to the prosecution of these women, social class did have some sort of play in whether they ended up being hung. Unless they were single, or widowed, accused "witches" from wealthy families could be confident that the accusations would be ignored by the authorities or deflected by their male presence through suits for slander against their accusers. Many were able to escape prosecution through their husband's influence.
Why the 17th Century?
By the late 1640's New Englanders grasped on a witchcraft belief system as essential to social status. Throughout the 17th century, Puritans' symbols, myths, and rituals believed that women posed dangers to human society. This is supported by Heinrich Institoris and Jakob Sprenger, who wrote, Malleus Maleficarum in (1486) (Ibid p.155). Which states women who interfere using herbs or other means to prevent conceptions are considered witches. Puritan women were pressed on forming ideology, beliefs in which way serve them better in old hierarchies. Priest's emphasized the importance of marriage, family, and the status of women's relation. Moreover, Puritans were taught to complete God's Divine as shown in the Bible. In other words, the "laws of god." For instance, it was most important to install good morals and values, pray daily and be the eye of the house. This shows a symbol to the family based on hierarchy.

There was an economic and gender aspect of witchcraft due to changes in private property traditions in New England in the 17th century. In Puritan New England, only men could transfer property although women could own property. Property laws were largely based on English jurisprudence, such as only men could inherit property. 75% of the accused witches in Salem, Massachusetts were women.

But due to social constraints, women had been inheriting land for some time thus establishing a tradition that flew in the face of British law. And for the most part, Puritan societies ignored that aspect of English common law, until the early part of the 17th century. So it is possible that the community tried to end this tradition and strictly adhered to British law on inheritance at a time of general economic downturn (somebody gets blamed whenever the economy gets sour).

He accused in Salem were predominately poor who owned small parcels of land. Some Puritans saw poor people as possible disruptors to Puritan communities and some Puritan communities banned poor people from residing in town (the strolling poor). But poverty does not fully answer the question because per British common law, women could inherit only one-third of the property but she could not control that inheritance. Rather the next male heir (a son for example) would decide what would be done with the land and when unmarried women (daughters) inherited land the closest make family member would hold the land in trust ( femme couvere) until she got married (at which point control of the land passed to her husband). But in the early 17th century these rules were not being followed and so it is possible that the community leaders (older men) needed to maintain control, to conserve the old ways by better controlling women, and that control became being accused of being a witch.

So some men, but mainly women were concluded to be witches and properly killed such as Katherine Harrison in 1669 (not Salem) and Susana Martin in 1692 (Salem). Harrison was a widow, a landowner, and lived alone. She lived an uneventful life until her husband died leaving his good farmlands to her, elevating her wealth and thus status in Wethersfield, Connecticut. She refused to sell or transfer the land and so she must have been a witch! She was found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to death. Her conviction will be overturned when she transferred her land to a male relative and left town. Martin tried to (and should have according to English common law) inherited part of her father's estate but Martin's husband had died so her father's estate went to Martin's half-sister. Trying to gain control of the property while living alone by someone who had a history of being accused of being a witch (yes, 1692 was not Martin's first run-in with the law), Susana Martin was charged with being a witch. This time the charges stuck and Martin was put to death, along with a few other witches.
Possible Answers
Now, to make things more interesting, most, but not all, of the accusers, lived in the west part of Salem and most of the defendants (and subsequent witches) lived in the east part of Salem. So, first, there is a gender aspect: women were behaving badly and so there was a response. Second, there was an economic aspect in which the accused were typically more well off than the accusers. And, the accused were typically older and lived in the older part of Salem (east) while the accusers were younger who lived in the west part of Salem. You see, those in the west part of Salem wanted to break away and form a new town but the established (more wealthy) part of Salem would have nothing to do with that, otherwise cutting their tax base off. Finally, there is a religious aspect because the accusers tended to be followers of a new kind of religious philosophy while the accused tended to be Puritans and Anglicans.

Over 90% of those accused of witchcraft were female so some of this might be about control. Changes in the community resulted in women marrying later, or not at all. Those women were considered of questionable value and thus were watched more intensely than any other group in Salem. Expecting the Devil to walk among them eventually resulted in the watchers (the accusers) cracking.

The accusers tended to live in the west part of Salem while the accused tended to live in the east part of Salem. The west part was newer and wanted to break away from the city to form their own town while those in the eastern half of Salem needed community unity for taxation purposes and thus refused to allow their town to be cut in half. The accusers tended to be the New Lights while the accused tended to be the Old Lights (see the First Great Awakening, a reaction to the Enlightenment).

All of these arguments dove-tail nicely to better answer the question of how and why.

As a result of Salem (and the other witchcraft crazy towns) will be the rise of the idea of "innocent until proven guilty."

Other students of mine investigated the witch craze outside of Salem. For example, Alejandra Cantu, Sarea Crouch, Devin Dembley, Luis Gonzalez, Rory Harris, and Thomas Hudson looked at witches in colonial Virginia and their research showed quite a different experience than Salem.

The only case that resulted in death in Virginia in the case of Katherine Grady. She was aboard a ship when a horrible storm met them at sea. Her fellow passengers managed to convince Captain Bennett that she was the witch who caused it. He decided to try and end the storm by hanging Grady. There is no evidence as to whether the storm stopped after Grady was executed. The ship landed in Virginia and Captain Bennett was cleared of any wrongdoing. There are no records of the court's findings. The only reason this case ended up in Virginia's files is that that was the Captain's destination. So while this makes for the only death in Virginian history when it comes to witchcraft, death was not given through Virginia courts.

William Harding's case is one of only two cases that resulted in a conviction during the witch craze in Colonial Virginia. Being found guilty of sorcery, Harding was to be struck ten times publicly and then given two months to depart from the county - but not before paying all the costs of his own trial. This case shows how Virginia carried out the law within its own colony. It did not follow English law word for word as sorcery, under the King James I statute, was considered a first-degree felony which punishment was to be death by hanging.

The only other conviction in Virginia was Grace Sherwood. Her case is the most famous case in Princess Anne County, Virginia since it is the only case that underwent the most scrutiny and is the only case in which multiple tests are performed. In 1698 began the legal troubles for Sherwood, she took her neighbors, the Gisburnes and the Barnes, to court for slandering her name. They had begun spreading rumors of Sherwood being a witch. The cause for which the rumors began is unknown, but the Giburnes claimed she bewitched their animals and crops and Mrs. Barnes claims Mrs. Sherwood turned into a cat right before her and went out through the keyhole of the door. The courts ruled against the Sherwood's and declared that they must pay the court for the transportation of his nine witnesses. After the death of Mrs. Sherwood's husband, the hostility between her and her neighbors resumed and even got physical with one of her neighbors, Elizabeth Hill, causing Mrs. Sherwood to claim she was "assaulted, bruised, maimed and barbarously beaten". The details of the altercation are unknown. Sherwood pressed charges of trespassing and assault. She won the case, only getting a fraction of what she asked for in damages, and the Hill's decided to prove her witchcraft in return. They claimed Mrs. Sherwood had performed witchcraft on Mrs. Hill and asked the court to get involved and investigate. The court summoned a jury of women to inspect Sherwood for a witch's mark. Another name used was devil's mark. These marks were considered to be numb and unable to bleed. They were also thought to be in private areas such as armpits or genitals. The searchers were of the same sex as the accused and in this case, the court demanded the women who were "ancient and knowing women" to ensure the women knew what they were searching for. The accused was to be blindfolded and then pricked with a pin. If no feeling was had in the mark then the searchers would conclude that the mark was supernatural.

The old women found that several devil marks were indeed present on Sherwood's body. The court tried to summon another group of women to perform another test but was unable to assemble the women. With this being the case the court decided to impose another test, which was trial by ducking. People believed a witch would be prevented from drowning because they had "thrown off the waters of baptism." A person would be placed in a bag with holes or inside a bed sheet with ropes tied around their waist. If the person started to drown then they were declared innocent; floating proved guilt. Sherwood was bound hands to feet and lowered into the body of water and she stayed afloat.

There are no records as to what actually happened to Sherwood, but what is known is she survived whatever it is she went through and grew to be roughly eighty years old. With this being Virginia's most famous case and despite all the evidence mounted against her, she was not murdered. This demonstrates how Virginia, by taking investigations seriously and not killing any person accused of being a witch, was lenient with suspected, or even what they believed to be guilty, witches.

Virginian courts followed English laws, but also dictated how they interpreted those laws especially when it came to punishments due to people such as Reginald Scot, who worked as a justice of the peace and member of Parliament, and John Webster, who wrote literature claiming not all bad luck should be blamed on witchcraft, who began to voice those investigations should be thorough considering the outcome of a guilty verdict could mean death.
Women & Families in Colonial America
Colonial Virginians were also hesitant to kill due to their religion, Anglicanism. The settlers in Virginia took their religion seriously as they believed a trait of being an English person was to be an Anglican and remain part of the Church of England. Anglicans rejected Calvinism, which stated that only a select few would be accepted to heaven and the rest could never earn salvation. Earning salvation and enlightenment by reason were factors that led to leniency in the Virginian courts. Also, maybe due to England being across the ocean, the Virginian justices felt less pressure to follow the rules since there was no one from England there to enforce English laws and therefore Anglicans refused to kill any valuable women. During this time women were more valuable than any commodity due to men rapidly dying of illness, specifically malaria. There are only roughly twenty cases in Virginian court records and only one resulted in death.

Early life in the American colonies was hard-everyone had to pitch in to produce the necessities of life. There was little room for slackers; as John Smith decreed in the Virginia colony, "He who does not work, will not eat." Because men outnumbered women by a significant margin in the early southern colonies, life there, especially family life, was relatively unstable. But the general premise that all colonials had to work to ensure survival meant that everyone, male and female, had to do one's job. The work required to sustain a family in the rather bleak environments of the early colonies was demanding for all.

While the women had to sew, cook, take care of domestic animals, make many of the necessities used in the household such as soap, candles, clothing, and other necessities, the men were busy building, plowing, repairing tools, harvesting crops, hunting, fishing, and protecting the family from whatever threat might come, from wild animals to Indians. It was true that the colonists brought with them traditional attitudes about the proper status and roles of women. Women were considered to be the "weaker vessels," not as strong physically or mentally as men and less emotionally stable. Legally they could neither vote, hold public office, nor participate in legal matters on their own behalf, and opportunities for them outside the home were frequently limited. Women were expected to defer to their husbands and be obedient to them without question. Husbands, in turn, were expected to protect their wives against all threats, even at the cost of their own lives if necessary.

It is clear that separation of labor existed in the New World-women did traditional work generally associated with females. But because labor was so valuable in colonial America, many women were able to demonstrate their worth by pursuing positions such as midwives, merchants, printers, and even doctors. In addition, because the survival of the family depended upon the contribution of every family member-including children, once they were old enough to work-women often had to step into their husband's roles in case of incapacitation from injury or illness. Women were commonly able to contribute to the labor involved in farming by attending the births of livestock, driving plow horses, and so on. Because the family was the main unit of society, and was especially strong in New England, the wife's position within the family, while subordinate to that of her husband, nevertheless meant that through her husband she could participate in the public life of the colony. It was assumed, for example, that when a man cast a vote in any sort of election, the vote was cast on behalf of his family. If the husband were indisposed at the time of the election, wives were generally allowed to cast the family vote in his place.

Women were in short supply in the colonies, as indeed was all labor, so they tended to be more highly valued than in Europe. The wife was an essential component of the nuclear family, and without a strong and productive wife, a family would struggle to survive. If a woman became a widow, for example, suitors would appear with almost unseemly haste to bid for the services of the woman through marriage. (In the Virginia colony it was bantered about that when a single man showed up with flowers at the funeral of a husband, he was more likely to be courting than mourning or offering condolences.)

Religion in Puritan New England followed congregational traditions, meaning that the church hierarchy was not as highly developed as in the Anglican and Catholic faiths. New England women tended to join the church in greater numbers than men, a phenomenon known as the "feminization" of religion, although it is not clear how that came about. In general, colonial women fared well for the times in which they lived. In any case, the lead in the family practice of religion in New England was often taken by the wife. It was the mother who brought up the children to be good Christians and the mother who often taught them to read so that they could study the Bible. Because both men and women were required to live according to God's law, both boys and girls were taught to read the Bible.

The feminization of religion in New England set an important precedent for what later became known as "Republican motherhood" during the Revolutionary period. Because mothers were responsible for the raising of good Christian children, as the religious intensity of Puritan New England tapered off, it was the mother who was later expected to raise children who were ethically sound, and who would become good citizens. When the American Revolution shifted responsibility for the moral condition of the state from the monarch to "we, the people," the raising of children to become good citizens became a political contribution of good "republican" mothers.

Despite the traditional restrictions on colonial women, many examples can be found indicating that women were often granted legal and economic rights and were allowed to pursue businesses; many women were more than mere housewives, and their responsibilities were important and often highly valued in colonial society. They appeared in court, conducted business, and participated in public affairs from time to time, circumstances warranting. Although women in colonial America could by no means be considered to have been held "equal" to men, they were as a rule probably as well off as women anywhere in the world, and in general probably even better off.

Although women in colonial America were subject to the same prejudices that had existed in Western culture for centuries, the nature of life in America brought about more favorable circumstances for women. Because everybody had to work, and because labor was viable in America, the presence of women was seen as a blessing or leased a necessity. Men worked hard, and the women were responsible for the raising of the children. The children, in turn, were expected to be productive members of the family and as soon as they were old enough they began performing various chores and tasks around the household and farm to help ease the burdens of their hard-working parents. Girls learned the chores that were traditionally a woman's lot, while boys learned how to assist their fathers in the fields and workshops. Family discipline was of necessity often strict; children who are slackers constituted a burden rather than an aid to their families. They expected to lead lives similar to those of their parents, but in a land that offered a modicum of opportunity for prosperity, such expectations were reasonable.

I wish to thank my Fall 2019 students Paula Aguirre, Enrique Arana, Camila Arajuo, Isabel Caballero, Alejandra Cantu, Sarea Crouch, Devin Dembley, Luis Gonzalez, Rory Harris, and Thomas Hudson for their interest in the intersection of women and culture. Their participation made this chapter more full and rich.

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Colonial Cultures Jim Ross-Nazzal, PhD and Students "The sermons of the seventeenth century were the very essence of America." -Perry Miller on orthodoxy in America - The New England Mind PILGRIMS OR PURITANS?

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1507: Early Settlement of the first American colonies- Jamestown

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1507: Early Settlement of the first American colonies- Jamestown

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1741: Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

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1741: Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

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4.2 Revolutionary War: Period Characteristics

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4.2 Revolutionary War: Period Characteristics

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1. Mostly comprised of philosophers, scientists, writing speeches and pamphlets

2. Human beings can arrive at truth (God's rules) by using deductive reasoning, rather than relying on the authority of the past, on religious faith, or intuition

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4.2 Revolutionary War: Authors and Works

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4.2 Revolutionary War: Authors and Works

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Benjamin Franklin
—Autobiography

Patrick Henry
—"Speech to the Virginia Convention"

Thomas Paine
—"The Crisis"

Phyllis Wheatley
—poetry

The Constitution

The Bill of Rights

The Declaration of Independence

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After Christopher Columbus’ historic voyage in 1492, Spain dominated the race to establish colonies in the Americas, while English efforts, such as the “lost colony” of Roanoke, met with failure.

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Jamestown Colony - Facts, Founding, Pocahontas | HISTORY

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The Jamestown Colony was the first permanent English settlement in North America. It was founded on the banks of Virginia’s James River in 1607.

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From this article I learned that now, most famous as a traitor to the American cause, General Benedict Arnold began the Revolutionary War as one of its earliest heroes, helping lead rebel forces in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775.

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By June 1776, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, a growing majority of the colonists had come to favor independence from Britain. On July 4, the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, drafted by a five-man committee including Franklin and John Adams but written mainly by Jefferson. That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New York. In August, Howe's Redcoats routed the Continental Army on Long Island; Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York City by September. Pushed across the Delaware River, Washington fought back with a surprise attack in Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas night and won another victory at Princeton to revive the rebels' flagging hopes before making winter quarters at Morristown.

British strategy in 1777 involved two main prongs of attack aimed at separating New England (where the rebellion enjoyed the most popular support) from the other colonies. To that end, General John Burgoyne's army marched south from Canada toward a planned meeting with Howe's forces on the Hudson River. Burgoyne's men dealt a devastating loss to the Americans in July by retaking Fort Ticonderoga, while Howe decided to move his troops southward from New York to confront Washington's army near the Chesapeake Bay. The British defeated the Americans at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania, on September 11 and entered Philadelphia on September 25. Washington rebounded to strike Germantown in early October before withdrawing to winter quarters near Valley Forge.

Howe's move had left Burgoyne's army exposed near Saratoga, New York, and the British suffered the consequences of this on September 19, when an American force under General Horatio Gates defeated them at Freeman's Farm in the first Battle of Saratoga. After suffering another defeat on October 7 at Bemis Heights (the Second Battle of Saratoga), Burgoyne surrendered his remaining forces on October 17. The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France (which had been secretly aiding the rebels since 1776) to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June 1778. The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war.

During the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Washington's troops benefited from the training and discipline of the Prussian military officer Baron Friedrich von Steuben (sent by the French) and the leadership of the French aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette. On June 28, 1778, as British forces under Sir Henry Clinton (who had replaced Howe as supreme commander) attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia to New York, Washington's army attacked them near Monmouth, New Jersey. The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. On July 8, a French fleet commanded by the Comte d'Estaing arrived off the Atlantic coast, ready to do battle with the British. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island, in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North.

The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from 1779 to 1781, including the defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious mutinies within the Continental Army. In the South, the British occupied Georgia by early 1779 and captured Charleston, South Carolina in May 1780. British forces under Lord Charles Cornwallis then began an offensive in the region, crushing Gates' American troops at Camden in mid-August, though the Americans scored a victory over Loyalist forces at King's Mountain in early October. Nathanael Green replaced Gates as the American commander in the South that December. Under Green's command, General Daniel Morgan scored a victory against a British force led by Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina, on January 17, 1781.

By the fall of 1781, Greene's American forces had managed to force Cornwallis and his men to withdraw to Virginia's Yorktown peninsula, near where the York River empties into Chesapeake Bay. Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14,000 soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October 19. Claiming illness, the British general sent his deputy, Charles O'Hara, to surrender; after O'Hara approached Rochambeau to surrender his sword (the Frenchman deferred to Washington), Washington gave the nod to his own deputy, Benjamin Lincoln, who accepted it.

Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown, contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive victory yet. British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful main army still resided in New York. Though neither side would take decisive action over the better part of the next two years, the British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late 1782 finally pointed to the end of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris. At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain (which had entered the conflict in 1779), bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years.

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Revolutionary War - Timeline, Facts & Battles | HISTORY

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The Revolutionary War (1775-83), also known as the American Revolution, arose from growing tensions between residents of Great Britain's 13 North American colonies and the colonial government, which represented the British crown.

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Early Settlement Jamestown

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Revolutionary War

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5.2 Revolutionary War: Period Characteristics

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5.2 Revolutionary War: Period Characteristics

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1. Mostly comprised of philosophers, scientists, writing speeches and pamphlets

2. Human beings can arrive at truth (God's rules) by using deductive reasoning, rather than relying on the authority of the past, on religious faith, or intuition

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A fact I learned about the Enlightenment is that it questioned traditional gender roles. Enlightenment thinkers questioned the prevailing notion of women’s inferiority and advocated for gender equality. Mary Wollstonecraft, in her influential work “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” argued for women’s education and empowerment.

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The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement.

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that swept across Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. It emphasized reason, logic, and individualism as the basis for knowledge and societal progress.

Key figures of the Enlightenment included Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke.

Voltaire, Rousseau, and Locke were prominent philosophers and thinkers who greatly contributed to the ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment. Their works challenged traditional authority and championed concepts such as freedom of speech, human rights, and the separation of powers.

The Enlightenment had a significant impact on the American Revolution.

The ideas of the Enlightenment played a crucial role in shaping the American Revolution and the founding principles of the United States. Concepts such as natural rights, government by consent, and the pursuit of happiness can be traced back to the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on the founding fathers.

The Enlightenment laid the foundation for modern science.

The Enlightenment brought about a paradigm shift in scientific thinking, promoting empirical observation and experimentation as the primary means of understanding the natural world. This led to significant advancements in fields such as physics, biology, and chemistry.

Enlightenment thinkers challenged religious and political authority.

One of the central tenets of the Enlightenment was the rejection of blind faith and absolute monarchy. Thinkers of the time criticized religious dogma, advocated for religious tolerance, and called for the establishment of democratic governments based on the will of the people.

The Encyclopedia was a key publication of the Enlightenment.

The Encyclopedia, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert, was a monumental work that aimed to compile and disseminate knowledge during the Enlightenment. It encompassed a wide range of subjects and became an important tool for spreading the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe.

The Enlightenment challenged traditional gender roles.

Enlightenment thinkers questioned the prevailing notion of women's inferiority and advocated for gender equality. Mary Wollstonecraft, in her influential work "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," argued for women's education and empowerment.

The Enlightenment paved the way for the French Revolution.

The radical ideas of the Enlightenment, such as liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty, were instrumental in fueling the French Revolution. The revolution gave rise to the motto "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" and led to significant political and social reforms in France.

The Enlightenment spurred advancements in education.

During the Enlightenment, there was a growing emphasis on education as a means to foster critical thinking and intellectual development. The establishment of public schools and the democratization of knowledge became key goals of Enlightenment thinkers.

Read also: 15 Astounding Facts About Civil Engineer

The Salon culture was an important social aspect of the Enlightenment.

Salons were informal gatherings hosted by wealthy women in which intellectuals, artists, and philosophers would come together to discuss ideas. Salons provided a space for intellectual exchange, debate, and the dissemination of Enlightenment ideals.

The Enlightenment influenced the development of democracy.

Enlightenment thinkers championed the idea of popular sovereignty and challenged the divine right of kings. Their ideas provided the intellectual foundation for the establishment of democratic systems of governance in many countries around the world.

The Enlightenment spurred advancements in literature and the arts.

The Enlightenment saw a flourishing of literature, poetry, and art. Literary figures such as Voltaire, Goethe, and Rousseau produced influential works that reflected the values and ideas of the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment had an impact on religious tolerance.

Enlightenment thinkers advocated for religious tolerance and urged the separation of church and state. Their ideas contributed to the gradual acceptance of religious diversity and the decline of religious persecution in many parts of Europe.

The Enlightenment challenged superstition and irrational beliefs.

Enlightenment thinkers emphasized the importance of reason and rationality, seeking to dispel irrational beliefs and superstitions. They called for a scientific approach to understanding the world and encouraged critical thinking.

The Industrial Revolution was influenced by Enlightenment ideals.

The Industrial Revolution, which transformed society through advancements in manufacturing and technology, was influenced by the values and principles of the Enlightenment. The focus on progress, innovation, and scientific discovery paved the way for industrial advancements.

The Enlightenment fostered a spirit of individualism.

Enlightenment thinkers emphasized the importance of individual rights, freedoms, and autonomy. Their ideas laid the groundwork for the development of individualism as a core value in modern societies.

The Enlightenment challenged traditional notions of monarchy.

Enlightenment thinkers questioned the divine right of kings and argued for more accountable and limited forms of government. Their ideas helped to pave the way for constitutional monarchy and democracy.

The Enlightenment emphasized the power of human reason.

Reason was seen as the primary tool for understanding and solving societal problems during the Enlightenment. Rational thinking and intellectual inquiry were valued as essential components of progress and enlightenment.

The Enlightenment sparked a global spread of ideas.

The ideas and ideals of the Enlightenment spread beyond Europe and had a profound impact on the development of societies around the world. They influenced movements for independence and democratic reforms in various regions, leaving a lasting legacy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Enlightenment was a fascinating period in history that had a profound impact on society, politics, and intellectual thought. It was a time characterized by the pursuit of knowledge, reason, and individual rights. Throughout this article, we have explored 19 fun facts about the Enlightenment, shedding light on some lesser-known aspects of this crucial period. From influential thinkers and their ideas to cultural and scientific advancements, the Enlightenment continues to shape our world today.

FAQs
Q: Who were some of the key figures of the Enlightenment?
A: Some of the key figures of the Enlightenment include philosophers like Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Q: What were the main ideas of the Enlightenment?
A: The main ideas of the Enlightenment centered around reason, progress, individual rights, and the importance of education and scientific inquiry.
Q: How did the Enlightenment influence governments?
A: The Enlightenment played a significant role in shaping the concepts of democracy, limited government, and individual rights, which influenced the formation of modern democratic nations.
Q: What were some notable inventions and discoveries during the Enlightenment?
A: The Enlightenment era witnessed a plethora of inventions and discoveries, including the steam engine, vaccination, the electric battery, and the theory of gravity.
Q: What impact did the Enlightenment have on art and culture?
A: The Enlightenment brought forth new artistic movements like neoclassicism, emphasizing reason, order, and logic in art, architecture, and literature.
Q: How did the Enlightenment challenge religious beliefs?
A: The Enlightenment advocated for religious tolerance and challenged traditional religious institutions, promoting the idea of individual liberty and freedom of thought.
Q: Did the Enlightenment contribute to the American Revolution?
A: Yes, the Enlightenment played a significant role in shaping the ideals of the American Revolution, including concepts of natural rights, liberty, and self-governance.

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The Enlightenment period, also known as the Age of Reason, was a significant era in human history that brought forth groundbreaking ideas and new ways of thinki

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The Age of Reason was fraught with attacks on basic Christian beliefs and the rejection of God too. The irony of the period is that though man sought and believed himself to be enlightened, he missed the basic truths that would have been clear to him had he not hardened his heart in denunciation of God.

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Age of Reason - What was the Age of Reason?
The Age of Reason was an eighteenth-century movement which followed hard after the mysticism, religion, and superstition of the Middle Ages. The Age of Reason represented a genesis in the way man viewed himself, the pursuit of knowledge, and the universe. In this time period, man's previously held concepts of conduct and thought could now be challenged verbally and in written form; fears of being labeled a heretic or being burned at the stake were done away with. This was the beginning of an open society where individuals were free to pursue individual happiness and liberty. Politically and socially, the imperial concepts of the medieval world were abandoned. The Age of Reason included the shorter time period described as the Age of Enlightenment; during this time great changes occurred in scientific thought and exploration. New ideas filled the horizon and man was eager to explore these ideas, freely.

German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, defined enlightenment this way: "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority. Minority is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is self-caused when its source lies not in a lack of understanding but in a lack of determination to use it without the assistance of another."

The Age of Reason need not necessarily be viewed as a high point in the history of man. Man began to embrace an exaggerated belief in the perfection of humanity based on reason and clear thinking; they happily abandoned reliance on biblical truth and lost their fear of God. Leaving the medieval extremes of mysticism and superstition they swung to the other extremes of reason and rationality, overlooking the subtle shades of grey in between.

Age of Reason - Reason, Rationality and Enlightenment
The Age of Reason brought about a great change in the tale of man's sojourn on earth. Reason, rationality and enlightenment became the new 'gods.' For the previous seventeen hundred years the perfection of man was only to be obtained through grace after death. The Protestant revolt to the Catholic Church and subsequent 'holy wars' had done nothing to change the accepted underlying beliefs of society: revelation was the source of ultimate truth and could only be received as a communication from God. This was the basis of Christianity. Now, in this new age, man felt obligated to follow his own intellect, not 'revealed' truth. Earth and emphasis on nature became the new dogma; miracles, prophecy, and religious rites were mere superstitions. Reason, philosophically, is defined as the ability to form and operate upon concepts in abstraction, narrowing information to its bare content, without emotion. Rationality carries the dual implication of ordered inference and comprehension along with understanding and explanation. Enlightenment is more or less the application of reason and rationality to previously held beliefs resulting in broader, clearer thinking.

The Age of Reason saw the introduction of the Scientific Revolution and various progressions of new schools of thought. Dualism advocated by Descartes taught that God (mind) and man (nature) were distinct. Baruch Spinoza introduced the idea of pantheism, namely, God and the universe are one and further that, "God was a substance consisting of infinite attributes." Believers in Deism, described as the religion of reason rejected Christianity as a body of revelation, mysterious and incomprehensible. God's revelation, believed Deists, was simple, logical and clear-cut, a natural religion which always existed.

Age of Reason - The Christian View
The Age of Reason was fraught with attacks on basic Christian beliefs, rejection of God and denial of miracles. In an attempt to divorce himself from the mysticism of the Middle Ages, man during the Age of Reason, applauded intellect and disdained spirit. God was believed to be unknowable, if He existed at all, and certainly there was no need for divine communication or revelation. Nature was revelation enough, showing all that needed to be known of God. Man was now free to postulate his own theories of existence and ideas about earth and its relation to the sun.

The irony of the period is that though man sought and believed himself to be enlightened, he missed the basic truths that would have been clear to him had he not hardened his heart in denunciation of God. Yes, indeed, God is revealed in nature: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge" (Psalm 19:1-2). The glory of God is clearly revealed in the works of God's hands. He alone is the giver of wisdom and knowledge. In deviating from the Bible, God's Word, as absolute truth, man has formulated all kinds of theories to explain his world. But as 1 Corinthians 3:19 says, "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight..."

God can only be found through a heart of faith. God has created man with the ability to think, discover, and reason. But all searching must first begin with God, recognizing Him as the author of all things and the One with absolute power and authority. "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise" (Psalm 111:10).

Learn More!

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

- We have all sinned and deserve God's judgment. God, the Father, sent His only Son to satisfy that judgment for those who believe in Him. Jesus, the creator and eternal Son of God, who lived a sinless life, loves us so much that He died for our sins, taking the punishment that we deserve, was buried, and rose from the dead according to the Bible. If you truly believe and trust this in your heart, receiving Jesus alone as your Savior, declaring, " Jesus is Lord," you will be saved from judgment and spend eternity with God in heaven.

What is your response?

Yes, today I am deciding to follow Jesus

Yes, I am already a follower of Jesus

I still have questions

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Age of Reason - What was the Age of Reason? The Age of Reason was an eighteenth-century movement which followed hard after the mysticism, religion, and superstition of the Middle Ages. The Age of Reason represented a genesis in the way man viewed himself, the pursuit of knowledge, and the universe.

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1. Everything in the world, including human beings, is a reflection of the Divine Soul.

2. People can use their intuition to behold God's spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls.

3. Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and link conformity to tradition.

4. Important social and political movements include the Abolitionist, Utopian, and Women's Suffrage MovementsRalph Waldo Emerson
—Nature
—"Self-Reliance"

Henry David Thoreau
—Walden
—Life in the Woods

Louisa May Alcott
—Little Women

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6.2 Transcendentalism: Authors and Works

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6.2 Transcendentalism: Authors and Works

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Ralph Waldo Emerson
—Nature
—"Self-Reliance"

Henry David Thoreau
—Walden
—Life in the Woods

Louisa May Alcott
—Little Women

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"Nature," an essay by Emerson, is considered one of the foundational texts of Transcendentalism. I found this pretty interesting because I have an essay that I'm writing about this.

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Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that emerged in the early 19th century, primarily in the United States. It emphasizes the inherent goodness of peo

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Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginative writers—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman—whose novels and poetry left a permanent imprint on American literature.

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American Renaissance, period from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which American literature, in the wake of the Romantic movement, came of age as an expression of a national spirit.

The literary scene of the period was dominated by a group of New England writers, the " Brahmins," notably Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. They were aristocrats, steeped in foreign culture, active as professors at Harvard College, and interested in creating a genteel American literature based on foreign models. Longfellow adapted European methods of storytelling and versifying to narrative poems dealing with American history. Holmes, in his occasional poems and his "Breakfast-Table" series (1858-91), brought touches of urbanity and jocosity to polite literature. Lowell put much of his homeland's outlook and values into verse, especially in his satirical Biglow Papers (1848-67).

One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists ( see Transcendentalism), centred in the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, and Margaret Fuller. The Transcendentalists contributed to the founding of a new national culture based on native elements. They advocated reforms in church, state, and society, contributing to the rise of free religion and the abolition movement and to the formation of various utopian communities, such as Brook Farm. The abolition movement was also bolstered by other New England writers, including the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier and the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) dramatized the plight of the black slave.

Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginative writers- Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman-whose novels and poetry left a permanent imprint on American literature. Contemporary with these writers but outside the New England circle was the Southern genius Edgar Allan Poe, who later in the century had a strong impact on European literature.

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American Renaissance, period from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which American literature, in the wake of the Romantic movement, came of age as an expression of a national spirit.

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Transcendentalism

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Rihanna took a stand in 2023 by refusing to perform at the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show until the NFL made progress addressing racial inequality and player protests. She later used her Fenty brand to fund education, climate change efforts, and racial justice initiatives.

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The real reason why Rihanna snubbed the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2019

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The Barbadian star will sing at the sports showcase on February 12, four years after refusing to do so in support of Black Lives Matter protests.

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Kehlani an R&B singer has been publicly taking a stand by speaking out for Palestine. She has used her music and her social media platforms to raise awareness of those who are suffering in Palestine.

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R&B singer Kehlani barred from Cornell performance over pro-Palestine comments

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University president says popular US singer was felt to have made ‘antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments’, after she made statements including ‘long live the intifada’

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1. Valued feeling, intuition, idealism, and inductive reasoning.

2. Placed faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination.

3. Shunned the artificiality of civilization and sought unspoiled nature as a path to spirituality.

4. Championed individual freedom and the worth of the individual

5. Saw poetry as the highest expression of the imagination

6. Dark Romantics: used dark and supernatural themes/settings (Gothic style)Washington Irving
—"Rip van Winkle"

Emily Dickinson
—poetry

Walt Whitman
—Leaves of Grass

Edgar Allan Poe
—"The Raven"

Nathaniel Hawthorne
—The Scarlet Letter

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Washington Irving
—"Rip van Winkle"

Emily Dickinson
—poetry

Walt Whitman
—Leaves of Grass

Edgar Allan Poe
—"The Raven"

Nathaniel Hawthorne
—The Scarlet Letter

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I learned that a good outcome from the Industrial Revolution is that it was the engine behind various advances in medicine and labor saving inventions.

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Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-nclc-01581)

The Industrial Revolution, the period in which agrarian and handicraft economies shifted rapidly to industrial and machine-manufacturing-dominated ones, began in the United Kingdom in the 18th century and later spread throughout many other parts of the world. This economic transformation changed not only how work was done and goods were produced, but it also altered how people related both to one another and to the planet at large. This wholesale change in societal organization continues today, and it has produced several effects that have rippled throughout Earth 's political, ecological, and cultural spheres. The following list describes some of the great benefits as well as some of the significant shortcomings associated with the Industrial Revolution.

Pro: Goods Became More Affordable and More Accessible
Factories and the machines that they housed began to produce items faster and cheaper than could be made by hand. As the supply of various items rose, their cost to the consumer declined ( see supply and demand). Shoes, clothing, household goods, tools, and other items that enhance people's quality of life became more common and less expensive. Foreign markets also were created for these goods, and the balance of trade shifted in favor of the producer-which brought increased wealth to the companies that produced these goods and added tax revenue to government coffers. However, it also contributed to the wealth inequality between goods-producing and goods-consuming countries.

Pro: The Rapid Evolution of Labor-Saving Inventions
The rapid production of hand tools and other useful items led to the development of new types of tools and vehicles to carry goods and people from one place to another. The growth of road and rail transportation and the invention of the telegraph (and its associated infrastructure of telegraph-and later telephone and fiber optic-lines) meant that word of advances in manufacturing, agricultural harvesting, energy production, and medical techniques could be communicated between interested parties quickly. Labor-saving machines such as the spinning jenny (a multiple-spindle machine for spinning wool or cotton) and other inventions, especially those driven by electricity (such as home appliances and refrigeration) and fossil fuels (such as automobiles and other fuel-powered vehicles), are also well-known products of the Industrial Revolution.

Pro: The Rapid Evolution of Medicine
The Industrial Revolution was the engine behind various advances in medicine. Industrialization allowed medical instruments (such as scalpels, microscope lenses, test tubes, and other equipment) to be produced more quickly. Using machine manufacturing, refinements to these instruments could more efficiently roll out to the physicians that needed them. As communication between physicians in different areas improved, the details behind new cures and treatments for disease could be dispersed quickly, resulting in better care.

Pro: Enhanced Wealth and Quality of Life of the Average Person
Mass production lowered the costs of much-needed tools, clothes, and other household items for the common (that is, nonaristocratic) people, which allowed them to save money for other things and build personal wealth. In addition, as new manufacturing machines were invented and new factories were built, new employment opportunities arose. No longer was the average person so closely tied to land-related concerns (such as being dependent upon the wages farm labor could provide or the plant and animal products farms could produce). Industrialization reduced the emphasis on landownership as the chief source of personal wealth. The rising demand for manufactured goods meant that average people could make their fortunes in cities as factory employees and as employees of businesses that supported the factories, which paid better wages than farm-related positions. Generally speaking, people could save some portion of their wages, and many had the opportunity to invest in profitable businesses, thereby growing their family "nest eggs." The subsequent growth of the middle class in the United Kingdom and other industrializing societies meant that it was making inroads into the pool of economic power held by the aristocracy. Their greater buying power and importance in society led to changes in laws that were updated to better handle the demands of an industrialized society.

Pro: The Rise of Specialist Professions
As industrialization progressed, more and more rural folk flocked to the cities in search of better pay in the factories. To increase the factories' overall efficiency and to take advantage of new opportunities in the market, factory workers were trained to perform specialized tasks. Factory owners divided their workers into different groups, each group focusing on a specific task. Some groups secured and transported to the factories raw materials (namely iron, coal, and steel) used in mass production of goods, while other groups operated different machines. Some groups of workers fixed machines when they broke down, while others were charged with making improvements to them and overall factory operation.

As the factories grew and workers became more specialized, additional teachers and trainers were needed to pass on specialized skills. In addition, the housing, transportation, and recreational needs of factory workers resulted in the rapid expansion of cities and towns. Governmental bureaucracies grew to support these, and new specialized departments were created to handle traffic, sanitation, taxation, and other services. Other businesses within the towns also became more specialized as more builders, physicians, lawyers, and other workers were added to handle the various needs of the new residents.

Con: Overcrowding of Cities and Industrial Towns
The promise of better wages attracted migrants to cities and industrial towns that were ill-prepared to handle them. Although initial housing shortages in many areas eventually gave way to construction booms and the development of modern buildings, cramped shantytowns made up of shacks and other forms of poor-quality housing appeared first. Local sewerage and sanitation systems were overwhelmed by the sudden influx of people, and drinking water was often contaminated. People living in such close proximity, fatigued by poor working conditions, and drinking unsafe water presented ideal conditions for outbreaks of typhus, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases. The need to treat these and other diseases in urban areas spurred medical advances and the development of modern building codes, health laws, and urban planning in many industrialized cities.

Con: Pollution and Other Environmental Ills
With relatively few exceptions, the world's modern environmental problems began or were greatly exacerbated by the Industrial Revolution. To fuel the factories and to sustain the output of each and every type of manufactured good, natural resources (water, trees, soil, rocks and minerals, wild and domesticated animals, etc.) were transformed, which reduced the planet's stock of valuable natural capital. The global challenges of widespread water and air pollution, reductions in biodiversity, destruction of wildlife habitat, and even global warming can be traced back to this moment in human history. The more countries industrialize in pursuit of their own wealth, the greater this ecological transformation becomes. For example, atmospheric carbon dioxide, a primary driver of global warming, existed in concentrations of 275 to 290 parts per million by volume (ppmv) before 1750 and increased to more than 400 ppmv by 2017. In addition, human beings use more than 40% of Earth's land-based net primary production, a measure of the rate at which plants convert solar energy into food and growth. As the world's human population continues to grow and more and more people strive for the material benefits promised by the Industrial Revolution, more and more of Earth's resources are appropriated for human use, leaving a dwindling stock for the plants and animals upon whose ecosystem services (clean air, clean water, etc.) the biosphere depends.

Con: Poor Working Conditions
When factories sprung up in the cities and industrial towns, their owners prized production and profit over all else. Worker safety and wages were less important. Factory workers earned greater wages compared with agricultural workers, but this often came at the expense of time and less than ideal working conditions. Factory workers often labored 14-16 hours per day six days per week. Men's meager wages were often more than twice those of women. The wages earned by children who worked to supplement family income were even lower. The various machines in the factory were often dirty, expelling smoke and soot, and unsafe, both of which contributed to accidents that resulted in worker injuries and deaths. The rise of labor unions, however, which began as a reaction to child labor, made factory work less grueling and less dangerous. During the first half of the 20th century, child labor was sharply curtailed, the workday was reduced substantially, and government safety standards were rolled out to protect the workers' health and well-being.

Con: The Rise in Unhealthy Habits
As more cheap labor-saving devices become available, people performed less strenuous physical activity. While grueling farm-related labor was made far easier, and in many cases far safer, by replacing animal power and human power with tractors and other specialized vehicles to till the soil and plant and harvest crops, other vehicles, such as trains and automobiles, effectively reduced the amount of healthy exercise people partook in each day. Also, many professions that required large amounts of physical exertion outdoors were replaced by indoor office work, which is often sedentary. Such sedentary behaviors also occur away from work, as television programs and other forms of passive entertainment came to dominate leisure time. Added to this is the fact that many people eat food that has been processed with salt and sugar to help with its preservation, lower its cooking time, and increase its sweetness. Together, these lifestyle trends have led to increases in lifestyle-related diseases associated with obesity, such as heart disease, diabetes, and certain forms of cancer.

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The Rise of the Machines: Pros and Cons of the Industrial Revolution

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The Industrial Revolution made our lives easier, but did it make them better?

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I learned that Romanticism developed as a reaction against the growth of industrialization and the rigid social and political systems. This made Romantic writers want to focus more on nature and individual emotion.

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The Romantic Period began roughly around 1798 and lasted until 1837. The political and economic atmosphere at the time heavily influenced this period, with many writers finding inspiration from the French Revolution. There was a lot of social change during this period. Calls for the abolition of slavery became louder during this time, with more writing openly about their objections. After the Agricultural Revolution people moved away from the countryside and farmland and into the cities, where the Industrial Revolution provided jobs and technological innovations, something that would spread to the United States in the 19 th century. Romanticism was a reaction against this spread of industrialism, as well as a criticism of the aristocratic social and political norms and a call for more attention to nature. Although writers of this time did not think of themselves as Romantics, Victorian writers later classified them in this way because of their ability to capture the emotion and tenderness of man.
THE START OF ROMANTICISM
Robert Burns is considered the pioneer of the Romantic Movement. Although his death in 1796 precedes what many consider the start of Romanticism, his lyricism and sincerity mark him as an early Romantic writer. His most notable works are "Auld Lang Syne" (1788) and "Tam o' Shanter" (1791). Burns inspired many of the writers during the Romantic Period.

William Blake was one of the earliest Romantic Period writers. Blake believed in spiritual and political freedom and often wrote about these themes in his works. Although some of his poetry was published before the official start to the era, Blake can be seen as one of the founders of this movement. His works, Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), are two of his most significant. These collections of poetry are some of the first to romanticize children, and in these works Blake pits the innocence and imagination of childhood against the harsh corruption of adulthood, especially within the city of London. He was also known for his beautiful drawings, which accompanied each of these poems.
POETRY
Scholars say that the Romantic Period began with the publishing of Lyrical Ballads (1798) by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This was one of the first collections of poems that strayed from the more formal poetic diction of the Neoclassical Period. Poets of the period instead used everyday words that the average person could understand. This also aided in expressing human emotion. Wordsworth primarily wrote about nature. He felt it could provide a source of mental cleanliness and spiritual understanding. One of Wordsworth's well-known works is "The Solitary Reaper" (1807). This poem praises the beauty of music and shows the outpouring of expression and emotion that Wordsworth felt was necessary in poetry. His greatest piece is The Prelude (1850), a semi-autobiographical, conversation poem that chronicles Wordsworth's entire life. Conversational poetry was the literary genre most commonly used by Wordsworth and Coleridge, with the latter writing a series of eight poems following the genre structure of conversational verse and examining higher ideas of nature, man, and morality. This poetry is written in blank verse and is extremely personal and intimate in nature, with much of the content based on the author's life.

Coleridge and Wordsworth were very good friends and the two often influenced each other. While Wordsworth was much more meditative and calm, Coleridge was the opposite and lived a more uncontrolled life. Of his three major poems only one is complete: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). This poem tells the story of a sailor's journey and his experiences on the ship. The sailor is cursed by supernatural powers and is only able to return home when he appreciates the animals and nature around him. He is forced to wander the Earth sharing his story due to his earlier mistakes. His two other long form poems are (1816) and Christabel (1816). According to Coleridge, his poem Kubla Khan came to him in an opium-induced dream after reading a work about Chinese emperor Kublai Khan. He was never able to finish the work. Christabel tells the story of the title character meeting a stranger named Geraldine who asks for Christabel's help. Ignoring the supernatural signs, Christabel rescues and takes her home, but it appears that the stranger is not normal. Coleridge was only able to finish two out of his five intended parts to the poem.
The Second Generation of Romantic Poets
Succeeding Blake, Coleridge, and Wordsworth was a new generation of poets, each following the pattern of Romanticism of those before them. John Keats is still one of the most popular of these poets, with his work continually read and analyzed today. Keats aimed to express extreme emotion in his poetry, using natural imagery to do this. He is well known for his odes, lyrical stanzas that are typically written in praise of, or in dedication to, something or someone that the writer admires. These odes followed the genre of lyrical poetry and focused on intense emotion using personal narrative. Among these odes, " Ode to a Nightingale" (1819) and " Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819) are most famous. Keats was preoccupied with death and aging throughout his life, which is shown in each of these two odes. "Ode to a Nightingale" discusses the temporary status of life and beauty, but in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," he explores the artistic permanence of the images on the urn.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was seen as a radical thinker for his religious atheism and largely ostracized by his contemporaries for his political and social views. One of his most famous works is (1821). This was a pastoral elegy, a poem combining death and rural life, written for John Keats. The poem mourns the death of Keats and his contribution to poetry. Another of his well-known works was Ode to the West Wind (1819) where he discusses the force and power of the wild wind and shows the Romantic writer's tendency to connect nature with art.

Lord Byron differed from the writing styles of Keats and Shelley. He was heavily influenced by the satire and wit from the previous period and infused this in his poetry. His satire (1819-1824) is told in 17 cantos, divisions of long poems, and is based on the traditional legend of Don Juan. Byron changes the original telling of the story and instead of creating a womanizing character, he makes Don Juan someone easily seduced by women. The cantos follow his character's journey as he travels throughout Europe meeting several women and continually trying to escape from trouble. Byron's other notable work is Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1816), another lengthy narrative poem. This poem was largely biographical and discusses many of Byron's personal travels. It describes the reflections of a young man who is seeking new beginnings in foreign countries after experiencing many years of war. This poem is significant because it introduced the Byronic hero, typically a handsome and intelligent man with a tendency to be moody, cynical, and rebellious against social norms.
THE NOVEL
During the Romantic Period the novel grew in popularity and became one of the major sources of entertainment for middle class citizens. Authors began to tailor their writing to appeal to this audience. Sir Walter Scott gained popularity during this time, both in Britain and around Europe. He mainly wrote within the genre of historical romances and made this a viable form of fiction for later writers. Scott also focused on his home country of Scotland, often writing about its beauty and romanticism. Scott's first major novel was (1814), which is set during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. The rebellious group sought to restore the Stuart dynasty to Charles Edward Stuart. The hero, Edward Waverly, is commissioned to the army and sent to Scotland in 1745. While there, he joins the Jacobite groups even though he knows they will fail and is imprisoned; however, he is ultimately freed. The novel ends with a marriage between Waverly and a Baron's daughter, Rose, representing the rational, realistic present of Scotland post-rebellion. While this was his first success, generally The Antiquary (1816), Old Mortality (1816), and The Heart of Midlothian (1818) are considered his masterpieces.
Gothic Fiction
During the second half of the 18 th century, gothic fiction began to increase in popularity in Great Britain. This came from a look back to medieval times. Often this genre would combine supernatural and mysterious elements with the castles and dungeons of the past. The gothic novel combines the intense emotions of terror, anguish, fear, and even love. Coleridge and Byron both contributed works to this canon, but John William Polidori's The Vampyre (1819) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) stand out as two of the genre's most enduring pieces. Polidori's work has importance for creating the vampire literary genre. Bram Stoker's Dracula, published during the Victorian Period, would continue to generate popularity around vampirism.

Shelley combines elements of love and the supernatural in her gothic novel, Frankenstein. Dr. Victor Frankenstein harnesses the power of life and uses it to animate a creature he has built. When the creature is cast away and refused companionship for his hideous physical features, he becomes murderous and determines to ruin Victor's life.
Women Have Arrived
The Romantic Period saw more successful women writers, a precursor to their popularity in the Victorian era. The most significant female writer during this period was Jane Austen. Writing toward the end of the period, Austen did not always adhere to the strict Romantic Period guidelines and mocked some of the more extravagant plots of previous writers. Instead, Austen chose to highlight the everyday lives of average people, making a turn toward social realism. Her novels include relatable heroines with adventures that the ordinary reader would likely encounter. She was also able to better depict the lives of women in this way. She understood that women had very little class mobility at the time and used many of her novels as a way to show this. Some of her famous novels include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), (1815), and Northanger Abbey (1817). Pride and Prejudice is still widely read today and tells the story of Elizabeth Bennet, the second eldest daughter among five. When Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy move into the neighborhood, the Bennet family hopes they will wed two of the unmarried daughters. Although Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy clash heads early on in the novel, they eventually fall in love and get married. Austen's novel Emma is also very popular and shows the consequences of meddling with love. Emma thinks that she could be a matchmaker, but her efforts ultimately fail and lead to heartbreak along the way. Although in the beginning of the novel she vows never to marry, by the end she realizes she is in love with Mr. Knightly and the two do get married.

The European Romantic Movement reached America in the early 19 th century. It encompassed many of the same ideals, genres, and styles as the European Romanticism and appealed to the Americans' revolutionary spirit. The English Romantic Period ended with the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837. The Industrial Revolution was beginning to be fully felt by the people of England as the working class became dominant in the culture. Most significant would be the introduction of the steam printing press and the railroads, which would make it possible to easily make and distribute texts.

For this introduction I consulted: Robert Barnard's A Short History of English Literature, Stephen Coote's The Penguin Short History of English Literature, Andrew Sanders' The Short Oxford History of English Literature

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1812-1815

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1848

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What I learned about Nathaniel Hawthorne from this article is that after losing his position at the Salem Custom House due to a change in political leadership, he was very mad, produced The Scarlet Letter in just a few months, and then it was published in 1850, which then brought him significant fame.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne (born July 4, 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.-died May 19, 1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire) is one of the greatest fiction writers of 19th-century American literature. A master of the allegorical and symbolic tale, he remains best known for the novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).

Ancestry and early years

Hawthorne's ancestors had lived in Salem, Massachusetts, since the 17th century. His earliest American ancestor was William Hathorne, a magistrate who was a staunch defender of Puritan orthodoxy, with its zealous advocacy of a "pure," unaffected form of religious worship, its rigid adherence to a simple, almost severe, mode of life, and its conviction of the "natural depravity" of "fallen" humankind. (Hawthorne added a w to his surname when he began to write.) Among Hathorne's actions as magistrate was sentencing a Quaker woman to public whipping.

Hawthorne was later to wonder whether the decline of his family's prosperity and prominence during the 18th century, while other Salem families were growing wealthy from the lucrative shipping trade, might not be a retribution for this act and for the role of William Hathorne's son John as one of three judges in the Salem witchcraft trials that began in 1692.

When Nathaniel's father-a ship's captain-died during one of his voyages, he left his young widow without means to care for her two girls and Nathaniel, who was four years old. She moved in with her affluent brothers, the Mannings. Hawthorne grew up in their house in Salem and, for extensive periods during his teens, in Raymond, Maine, on the shores of Sebago Lake.

He returned to Salem in 1825 after four years at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine. Hawthorne did not distinguish himself as a young man. Instead, he spent nearly a dozen years reading and trying to master the art of writing fiction.

First works and the Transcendentalists

In college Hawthorne had excelled only in composition and had decided to become a writer. Upon graduation, he wrote Fanshawe, a novel that he published at his own expense-and then tried to destroy all copies after deciding it was unworthy of him.

Hawthorne, however, soon found his own voice, style, and subjects, and within five years of his graduation he had published "The Hollow of the Three Hills" and "An Old Woman's Tale", both notable short stories. By 1832, "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" and "Roger Malvin's Burial," considered two of his greatest tales, had been published. "Young Goodman Brown," a gripping tale of witchcraft, appeared in 1835.

His increasing success in placing his stories brought him a little fame. Unwilling to depend any longer on his uncles' generosity, he turned to a job in the Boston Custom House, which he held from 1839 to 1840, and for six months in 1841 he was a resident at the agricultural cooperative Brook Farm, a utopian experiment in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Even when the first book to be published under his name, Twice-Told Tales, was released in 1837, he gained gratifying recognition but no dependable income.

By 1842, however, Hawthorne's writing had brought him a sufficient income to allow him to marry Sophia Peabody. The couple rented a house called the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, and they began a happy three-year period that Hawthorne would later record in his essay "The Old Manse."

The presence in Concord of some of the leading social thinkers and philosophers of his day, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, and Bronson Alcott, made the village the center of the philosophy of Transcendentalism, which encouraged individuals to transcend the materialistic world of experience and facts and become conscious of the pervading spirit of the universe and the potentialities for human freedom. Hawthorne welcomed the companionship of his Transcendentalist neighbors, but he had little to say to them. Artists and intellectuals never inspired his full confidence, but he thoroughly enjoyed the visit of his old college friend and classmate Franklin Pierce, later to become president of the United States.

At the Old Manse, Hawthorne continued to write stories, with the same result as before: literary success, monetary failure. His new short-story collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, appeared in 1846.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne | Biography, Books, Short Stories, & Analysis

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Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) is one of the greatest fiction writers of 19th-century America. A novelist and short-story writer, he was a master of the allegorical and symbolic tale. Hawthorne is best known for the novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851).

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I learned that during the American Renaissance, a group of New English writers dominated the literary scene and they're actually the ones who crafted and refined American literature by adapting European storytelling techniques to many different stories that are rooted in American history.

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American Renaissance, period from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which American literature, in the wake of the Romantic movement, came of age as an expression of a national spirit.

The literary scene of the period was dominated by a group of New England writers, the " Brahmins," notably Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. They were aristocrats, steeped in foreign culture, active as professors at Harvard College, and interested in creating a genteel American literature based on foreign models. Longfellow adapted European methods of storytelling and versifying to narrative poems dealing with American history. Holmes, in his occasional poems and his "Breakfast-Table" series (1858-91), brought touches of urbanity and jocosity to polite literature. Lowell put much of his homeland's outlook and values into verse, especially in his satirical Biglow Papers (1848-67).

One of the most important influences in the period was that of the Transcendentalists ( see Transcendentalism), centred in the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley, and Margaret Fuller. The Transcendentalists contributed to the founding of a new national culture based on native elements. They advocated reforms in church, state, and society, contributing to the rise of free religion and the abolition movement and to the formation of various utopian communities, such as Brook Farm. The abolition movement was also bolstered by other New England writers, including the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier and the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) dramatized the plight of the black slave.

Apart from the Transcendentalists, there emerged during this period great imaginative writers- Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman-whose novels and poetry left a permanent imprint on American literature. Contemporary with these writers but outside the New England circle was the Southern genius Edgar Allan Poe, who later in the century had a strong impact on European literature.

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American Renaissance, period from the 1830s roughly until the end of the American Civil War in which American literature, in the wake of the Romantic movement, came of age as an expression of a national spirit.

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In 1950, McCarthy surged into national prominence by claiming that he possessed a list of 205 Communists working within the U.S State Department. This put him in a national spotlight even though he never produced the list to the public.

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Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy

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Senator McCarthy’s Oversight Abuses​ - Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy

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Senator McCarthy abused oversight and interrogation tactics to prompt intense scrutiny on officials and civilians alike. Read his Portrait in Oversight.

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In the early 1950's, McCarthyism started to peak and decline at the same time during the 36-day telivised Army-McCarthy's hearings.

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Table of Contents

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Red Scare, period of public fear and anxiety over the supposed rise of communist or socialist ideologies in a noncommunist state. The term is generally used to describe two such periods in the United States. The first occurred from 1917 to 1920, amid an increase in organized labour movements, immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. The second period, also called McCarthyism after U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, took place from roughly 1947 to 1954.

The first Red Scare began toward the end of World War I. It was fueled in part by a surge in activity among organized labour alongside anxiety stemming from the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which Vladimir Lenin's Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party overthrew the Russian tsar and proved that a popular labour-led movement could successfully take over the reins of government. Fears of a Bolshevik conspiracy to overthrow the United States government drove paranoia, and U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer carried out a series of raids against foreign-born individuals who were accused of anarchist, communist, and radical leftist sympathies. The Palmer Raids, which were sometimes brutal and of questionable constitutionality, drew increasing criticism from the public as they failed to produce evidence of a Bolshevik conspiracy. The credibility of the Red Scare diminished in 1920 as Palmer's predictions of a revolution on May Day that year went unfulfilled.

The second Red Scare took place after World War II and at the nascence of the Cold War. The uneasy wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union had begun to unravel, and by 1948 the Soviets had installed communist governments in the countries of eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army. Many Americans were likewise alarmed by developments in 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong, took power in China and the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb.

In 1950 U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy began asserting that communists had infiltrated the highest ranks of the government, claiming in a speech that he had a list of employees of the U.S. Department of State who were loyal to the Soviet Union. He called for investigations into staff in the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other government agencies. Upon his reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1952, he was appointed chair of the Senate Committee on Government Operations and Investigations. In this capacity he presented colourful accusations that drove some government workers out of their jobs and brought popular condemnation to others. Many people besides McCarthy promoted the scare, which led to few convictions but much loss of employment for government employees, teachers, scholars, and people in the mass media.

Most notably, throughout the 1940s and '50s the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) conducted investigations into alleged communist activities by individuals who included well-known artists and entertainers. Among those investigated were film director Elia Kazan, playwrights Arthur Miller and Bertolt Brecht, folksinger Pete Seeger, and the so-called Hollywood Ten, 10 motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters whose refusal to answer the committee's questions regarding their possible communist affiliations resulted in their incarceration for contempt of Congress as well as blacklisting by the Hollywood studios for most of them. HUAC's most celebrated case, however, did not involve an entertainment industry figure but instead Alger Hiss, a former U.S. State Department official who was convicted in January 1950 of perjury concerning his involvement with Whittaker Chambers, who accused him of having participated in a communist spy ring.

The second Red Scare peaked in 1954 during the "McCarthy hearings," 36 days of televised investigative hearings into alleged espionage within the U.S. Army. The hearings, led by McCarthy, exposed his sensational and truculent interrogation tactics. At the hearings' climax, the Army's lawyer, Joseph Welch, countered one of McCarthy's accusations by saying, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" Welch's response gave expression to the public discrediting of McCarthy, who in December was censured by his colleagues in the Senate.

Roland Martin The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Red Scare | Definition, U.S. History, & Causes | Britannica

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Red Scare, period of public fear and anxiety over the supposed rise of communist or socialist ideologies in a noncommunist state. The term is generally used to describe two such periods in the United States. The first occurred from 1917 to 1920, amid an increase in organized labour movements,

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I learned that Maya Angelou wasn't just a poet, she also wrote the screenplay for the 1972 film Georgia, Georgia and later made her directorial debut with Down in the Delta, so she has a history of being behind the camera too.

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Dr. Maya Angelou’s verses are at the very heart of the American experience—yet she didn’t start out as a poet.

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Maya Angelou was the first African American and first female streetcar conductor in San Fransisco when she was just 17 years old.

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An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood's first female black director, but became most famous as a writer, editor, essayist, playwright, and poet. As a civil rights activist, Angelou worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She was also an educator and served as the Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. By 1975, wrote Carol E. Neubauer in Southern Women Writers: The New Generation, Angelou was recognized "as a spokesperson for... all people who are committed to raising the moral standards of living in the United States." She served on two presidential committees, for Gerald Ford in 1975 and for Jimmy Carter in 1977. In 2000, Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Barack Obama. Angelou was awarded over 50 honorary degrees before her death.

Angelou's most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), deals with her early years in Long Beach, St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas, where she lived with her brother and paternal grandmother. In one of its most evocative (and controversial) moments, Angelou describes how she was first cuddled then raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was just seven years old. When the man was murdered by her uncles for his crime, Angelou felt responsible, and stopped talking. Angelou remained mute for five years, but developed a love for language. She read Black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. When Angelou was twelve and a half, Mrs. Flowers, an educated African American woman, finally got her to speak again. Mrs. Flowers, as Angelou recalled in her children's book Mrs. Flowers: A Moment of Friendship (1986), emphasized the importance of the spoken word, explained the nature of and importance of education, and instilled in her a love of poetry. Angelou graduated at the top of her eighth-grade class.

Angelou attended George Washington High School in San Francisco and took lessons in dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. When Angelou, just seventeen, graduated from high school and gave birth to a son, Guy, she began to work as the first African American and first female street car conductor in San Francisco. As she explained in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas (1976), the third of her autobiographies, she also "worked as a shake dancer in night clubs, fry cook in hamburger joints, dinner cook in a Creole restaurant and once had a job in a mechanic's shop, taking the paint off cars with my hands." Angelou married a white ex-sailor, Tosh Angelos, in 1950. After they separated, Angelou continued her study of dance in New York City, returning to San Francisco to sing in the Purple Onion cabaret and garnering the attention of talent scouts. From 1954 to 1955, she was a member of the cast of a touring production of Porgy and Bess. During the late 1950s, Angelou sang in West Coast and Hawaiian nightclubs, before returning to New York to continue her stage career.

Angelou joined the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 1950s and met James Baldwin and other important writers. It was during this time that Angelou had the opportunity to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak. Inspired by his message, she decided to become a part of the struggle for civil rights. She was offered a position as the northern coordinator for Dr. King's SCLC. Following her work for Dr. King, Angelou moved to Cairo with her son, and, in 1962, to Ghana in West Africa. She worked as a freelance writer and was a feature editor at the African Review. When Angelou returned to the United States in the mid-1960s, she was encouraged by author James Baldwin and Robert Loomis, an editor at Random House, to write an autobiography. Initially, Angelou declined the offers, but eventually changed her mind and wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book chronicles Angelou's childhood and ends with the birth of her son. It won immediate success and was nominated for a National Book Award.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of Angelou's six autobiographies. It is widely taught in schools, though it has faced controversy over its portrayal of race, sexual abuse and violence. Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques like dialogue and plot in her autobiographies was innovative for its time and helped, in part, to complicate the genre's relationship with truth and memory. Though her books are episodic and tightly-crafted, the events seldom follow a strict chronology and are arranged to emphasize themes. Other volumes include Gather Together in My Name (1974), which begins when Angelou is seventeen and a new mother; Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas, an account of her tour in Europe and Africa with Porgy and Bess; The Heart of a Woman (1981), a description of Angelou's acting and writing career in New York and her work for the civil rights movement; and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), which recounts Angelou's travels in West Africa and her decision to return, without her son, to America.

It took Angelou fifteen years to write the final volume of her autobiography, A Song Flung up to Heaven (2002). The book covers four years, from the time Angelou returned from Ghana in 1964 through the moment when she sat down at her mother's table and began to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1968. Angelou hesitated so long to start the book and took so long to finish it, she told Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service interviewer Sherryl Connelly, because so many painful things happened to her, and to the entire African-American community, in those four years. "I didn't know how to write it," she said. "I didn't see how the assassination of Malcolm [X], the Watts riot, the breakup of a love affair, then [the assassination of Dr.] Martin [Luther] King [Jr.], how I could get all that loose with something uplifting in it." A Song Flung up to Heaven deals forthrightly with these events, and "the poignant beauty of Angelou's writing enhances rather than masks the candor with which she addresses the racial crisis through which America was passing," Wayne A. Holst wrote in Christian Century.

Angelou was also a prolific and widely-read poet, and her poetry has often been lauded more for its depictions of Black beauty, the strength of women, and the human spirit; criticizing the Vietnam War; demanding social justice for all-than for its poetic virtue. Yet Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, which was published in 1971, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1972. According to Carol Neubauer in Southern Women Writers, "the first twenty poems describe the whole gamut of love, from the first moment of passionate discovery to the first suspicion of painful loss." In other poems, "Angelou turns her attention to the lives of black people in America from the time of slavery to the rebellious 1960s. Her themes deal broadly with the painful anguish suffered by blacks forced into submission, with guilt over accepting too much, and with protest and basic survival."

As Angelou wrote her autobiographies and poems, she continued her career in film and television. She was the first Black woman to have a screenplay ( Georgia, Georgia) produced in 1972. She was honored with a nomination for an Emmy award for her performance in Roots in 1977. In 1979, Angelou helped adapt her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, for a television movie of the same name. Angelou wrote the poetry for the 1993 film Poetic Justice and played the role of Aunt June. She also played Lelia Mae in the 1993 television film There Are No Children Here and appeared as Anna in the feature film How to Make an American Quilt in 1995.

One source of Angelou's fame in the early 1990s was President Bill Clinton's invitation to write and read an inaugural poem. Americans all across the country watched as she read "On the Pulse of Morning," which begins "A Rock, a River, a Tree" and calls for peace, racial and religious harmony, and social justice for people of different origins, incomes, genders, and sexual orientations. It recalls the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech as it urges America to "Give birth again / To the Dream" of equality. Angelou challenged the new administration and all Americans to work together for progress: "Here, on the pulse of this new day, / You may have the grace to look up and out / And into your sister's eyes, and into / Your brother's face, your country /And say simply / Very simply / With hope-Good morning."

During the early 1990s, Angelou wrote several books for children, including Life Doesn't Frighten Me (1993), which also featured the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat; My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me (1994), and Kofi and His Magic (1996), both collaborations with the photographer Margaret Courtney-Clark. Angelou's poetry collections include The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994) and Phenomenal Woman (1995), a collection of four poems that takes its title from a poem which originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1978. The poem's narrator describes the physical and spiritual characteristics and qualities that make her attractive. Angelou also wrote occasional poems, including A Brave Startling Truth (1995), which commemorated the founding of the United Nations, and Amazing Peace (2005), a poem written for the White House Christmas tree-lighting ceremony.

Angelou published multiple collections of essays. Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) contains declarations, complaints, memories, opinions, and advice on subjects ranging from faith to jealousy. Genevieve Stuttaford, writing in Publishers Weekly, described the essays as "quietly inspirational pieces." Anne Whitehouse of the New York Times Book Review observed that the book would "appeal to readers in search of clear messages with easily digested meanings." Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997) is the sister volume, a book of "candid and lovingly crafted homilies" to "sensuality, beauty, and black women" said Donna Seaman in Booklist. Letter to my Daughter was published in 2008.

Angelou's poetry often benefited from her performance of it, and during her lifetime Angelou recited her poems before spellbound crowds. Indeed, Angelou's poetry can also be traced to African-American oral traditions like slave and work songs, especially in her use of personal narrative and emphasis on individual responses to hardship, oppression and loss. In addition to examining individual experience, Angelou's poems often respond to matters like race and sex on a larger social and psychological scale. Describing her work to George Plimpton, Angelou said, "Once I got into it I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass-the slave narrative-speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we.' And what a responsibility. Trying to work with that form, the autobiographical mode, to change it, to make it bigger, richer, finer, and more inclusive in the twentieth century has been a great challenge for me."

In 2013 she was the recipient of the Literarian Award, an honorary National Book Award for contributions to the literary community. She died in 2014 at the age of 86.

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An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood's first female black director, but became most famous as a writer, editor,...

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Maya Angelou wrote seven autobiographies and her most famous one is called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, written in 1969.

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An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood's first female black director, but became most famous as a writer, editor, essayist, playwright, and poet. As a civil rights activist, Angelou worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She was also an educator and served as the Reynolds professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University. By 1975, wrote Carol E. Neubauer in Southern Women Writers: The New Generation, Angelou was recognized "as a spokesperson for... all people who are committed to raising the moral standards of living in the United States." She served on two presidential committees, for Gerald Ford in 1975 and for Jimmy Carter in 1977. In 2000, Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton. In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Barack Obama. Angelou was awarded over 50 honorary degrees before her death.

Angelou's most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), deals with her early years in Long Beach, St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas, where she lived with her brother and paternal grandmother. In one of its most evocative (and controversial) moments, Angelou describes how she was first cuddled then raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was just seven years old. When the man was murdered by her uncles for his crime, Angelou felt responsible, and stopped talking. Angelou remained mute for five years, but developed a love for language. She read Black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. When Angelou was twelve and a half, Mrs. Flowers, an educated African American woman, finally got her to speak again. Mrs. Flowers, as Angelou recalled in her children's book Mrs. Flowers: A Moment of Friendship (1986), emphasized the importance of the spoken word, explained the nature of and importance of education, and instilled in her a love of poetry. Angelou graduated at the top of her eighth-grade class.

Angelou attended George Washington High School in San Francisco and took lessons in dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. When Angelou, just seventeen, graduated from high school and gave birth to a son, Guy, she began to work as the first African American and first female street car conductor in San Francisco. As she explained in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas (1976), the third of her autobiographies, she also "worked as a shake dancer in night clubs, fry cook in hamburger joints, dinner cook in a Creole restaurant and once had a job in a mechanic's shop, taking the paint off cars with my hands." Angelou married a white ex-sailor, Tosh Angelos, in 1950. After they separated, Angelou continued her study of dance in New York City, returning to San Francisco to sing in the Purple Onion cabaret and garnering the attention of talent scouts. From 1954 to 1955, she was a member of the cast of a touring production of Porgy and Bess. During the late 1950s, Angelou sang in West Coast and Hawaiian nightclubs, before returning to New York to continue her stage career.

Angelou joined the Harlem Writers Guild in the late 1950s and met James Baldwin and other important writers. It was during this time that Angelou had the opportunity to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak. Inspired by his message, she decided to become a part of the struggle for civil rights. She was offered a position as the northern coordinator for Dr. King's SCLC. Following her work for Dr. King, Angelou moved to Cairo with her son, and, in 1962, to Ghana in West Africa. She worked as a freelance writer and was a feature editor at the African Review. When Angelou returned to the United States in the mid-1960s, she was encouraged by author James Baldwin and Robert Loomis, an editor at Random House, to write an autobiography. Initially, Angelou declined the offers, but eventually changed her mind and wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book chronicles Angelou's childhood and ends with the birth of her son. It won immediate success and was nominated for a National Book Award.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of Angelou's six autobiographies. It is widely taught in schools, though it has faced controversy over its portrayal of race, sexual abuse and violence. Angelou's use of fiction-writing techniques like dialogue and plot in her autobiographies was innovative for its time and helped, in part, to complicate the genre's relationship with truth and memory. Though her books are episodic and tightly-crafted, the events seldom follow a strict chronology and are arranged to emphasize themes. Other volumes include Gather Together in My Name (1974), which begins when Angelou is seventeen and a new mother; Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas, an account of her tour in Europe and Africa with Porgy and Bess; The Heart of a Woman (1981), a description of Angelou's acting and writing career in New York and her work for the civil rights movement; and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), which recounts Angelou's travels in West Africa and her decision to return, without her son, to America.

It took Angelou fifteen years to write the final volume of her autobiography, A Song Flung up to Heaven (2002). The book covers four years, from the time Angelou returned from Ghana in 1964 through the moment when she sat down at her mother's table and began to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1968. Angelou hesitated so long to start the book and took so long to finish it, she told Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service interviewer Sherryl Connelly, because so many painful things happened to her, and to the entire African-American community, in those four years. "I didn't know how to write it," she said. "I didn't see how the assassination of Malcolm [X], the Watts riot, the breakup of a love affair, then [the assassination of Dr.] Martin [Luther] King [Jr.], how I could get all that loose with something uplifting in it." A Song Flung up to Heaven deals forthrightly with these events, and "the poignant beauty of Angelou's writing enhances rather than masks the candor with which she addresses the racial crisis through which America was passing," Wayne A. Holst wrote in Christian Century.

Angelou was also a prolific and widely-read poet, and her poetry has often been lauded more for its depictions of Black beauty, the strength of women, and the human spirit; criticizing the Vietnam War; demanding social justice for all-than for its poetic virtue. Yet Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, which was published in 1971, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1972. According to Carol Neubauer in Southern Women Writers, "the first twenty poems describe the whole gamut of love, from the first moment of passionate discovery to the first suspicion of painful loss." In other poems, "Angelou turns her attention to the lives of black people in America from the time of slavery to the rebellious 1960s. Her themes deal broadly with the painful anguish suffered by blacks forced into submission, with guilt over accepting too much, and with protest and basic survival."

As Angelou wrote her autobiographies and poems, she continued her career in film and television. She was the first Black woman to have a screenplay ( Georgia, Georgia) produced in 1972. She was honored with a nomination for an Emmy award for her performance in Roots in 1977. In 1979, Angelou helped adapt her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, for a television movie of the same name. Angelou wrote the poetry for the 1993 film Poetic Justice and played the role of Aunt June. She also played Lelia Mae in the 1993 television film There Are No Children Here and appeared as Anna in the feature film How to Make an American Quilt in 1995.

One source of Angelou's fame in the early 1990s was President Bill Clinton's invitation to write and read an inaugural poem. Americans all across the country watched as she read "On the Pulse of Morning," which begins "A Rock, a River, a Tree" and calls for peace, racial and religious harmony, and social justice for people of different origins, incomes, genders, and sexual orientations. It recalls the civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech as it urges America to "Give birth again / To the Dream" of equality. Angelou challenged the new administration and all Americans to work together for progress: "Here, on the pulse of this new day, / You may have the grace to look up and out / And into your sister's eyes, and into / Your brother's face, your country /And say simply / Very simply / With hope-Good morning."

During the early 1990s, Angelou wrote several books for children, including Life Doesn't Frighten Me (1993), which also featured the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat; My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me (1994), and Kofi and His Magic (1996), both collaborations with the photographer Margaret Courtney-Clark. Angelou's poetry collections include The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994) and Phenomenal Woman (1995), a collection of four poems that takes its title from a poem which originally appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1978. The poem's narrator describes the physical and spiritual characteristics and qualities that make her attractive. Angelou also wrote occasional poems, including A Brave Startling Truth (1995), which commemorated the founding of the United Nations, and Amazing Peace (2005), a poem written for the White House Christmas tree-lighting ceremony.

Angelou published multiple collections of essays. Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) contains declarations, complaints, memories, opinions, and advice on subjects ranging from faith to jealousy. Genevieve Stuttaford, writing in Publishers Weekly, described the essays as "quietly inspirational pieces." Anne Whitehouse of the New York Times Book Review observed that the book would "appeal to readers in search of clear messages with easily digested meanings." Even the Stars Look Lonesome (1997) is the sister volume, a book of "candid and lovingly crafted homilies" to "sensuality, beauty, and black women" said Donna Seaman in Booklist. Letter to my Daughter was published in 2008.

Angelou's poetry often benefited from her performance of it, and during her lifetime Angelou recited her poems before spellbound crowds. Indeed, Angelou's poetry can also be traced to African-American oral traditions like slave and work songs, especially in her use of personal narrative and emphasis on individual responses to hardship, oppression and loss. In addition to examining individual experience, Angelou's poems often respond to matters like race and sex on a larger social and psychological scale. Describing her work to George Plimpton, Angelou said, "Once I got into it I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass-the slave narrative-speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we.' And what a responsibility. Trying to work with that form, the autobiographical mode, to change it, to make it bigger, richer, finer, and more inclusive in the twentieth century has been a great challenge for me."

In 2013 she was the recipient of the Literarian Award, an honorary National Book Award for contributions to the literary community. She died in 2014 at the age of 86.

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An acclaimed American poet, storyteller, activist, and autobiographer, Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou had a broad career as a singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood's first female black director, but became most famous as a writer, editor,...

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Anne Bradstreet never attended school, her father is the one who educated her himself.

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Anne Bradstreet was the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet. Her volume of poetry , , Hobbes, Joshua Sylvester's 1605 translation of Guillaume du Bartas's The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America ... received considerable favorable attention when it was first published in London in 1650. Eight years after it appeared it was listed by William London in his Plutarch, Livy, Pliny, Suetonius, Divine Weeks and Workes, and the Geneva version of the Bible. In general, she benefited from the Elizabethan tradition that valued female education. In about 1628-the date is not certain-Anne Dudley married Simon Bradstreet, who assisted her father with the management of the Earl's estate in Sempringham. She remained married to him until her death on September 16, 1672. Bradstreet immigrated to the new world with her husband and parents in 1630; in 1633 the first of her children, Samuel, was born, and her seven other children were born between 1635 and 1652: Dorothy (1635), Sarah (1638), Simon (1640), Hannah (1642), Mercy (1645), Dudley (1648), and John (1652).

Although Bradstreet was not happy to exchange the comforts of the aristocratic life of the Earl's manor house for the privations of the New England wilderness, she dutifully joined her father and husband and their families on the Puritan errand into the wilderness. After a difficult three-month crossing, their ship, the Arbella, docked at Salem, Massachusetts, on July 22, 1630. Distressed by the sickness, scarcity of food, and primitive living conditions of the New England outpost, Bradstreet admitted that her "heart rose" in protest against the "new world and new manners." Although she ostensibly reconciled herself to the Puritan mission-she wrote that she "submitted to it and joined the Church at Boston"-Bradstreet remained ambivalent about the issues of salvation and redemption for most of her life.

Once in New England the passengers of the Arbella fleet were dismayed by the sickness and suffering of those colonists who had preceded them. Thomas Dudley observed in a letter to the Countess of Lincoln, who had remained in England: "We found the Colony in a sad and unexpected condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before; and many of those alive weak and sick; all the corn and bread amongst them all hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight." In addition to fevers, malnutrition, and inadequate food supplies, the colonists also had to contend with attacks by Native Americans who originally occupied the colonized land. The Bradstreets and Dudleys shared a house in Salem for many months and lived in spartan style; Thomas Dudley complained that there was not even a table on which to eat or work. In the winter the two families were confined to the one room in which there was a fireplace. The situation was tense as well as uncomfortable, and Anne Bradstreet and her family moved several times in an effort to improve their worldly estates. From Salem they moved to Charlestown, then to Newtown (later called Cambridge), then to Ipswich, and finally to Andover in 1645.

Although Bradstreet had eight children between the years 1633 and 1652, which meant that her domestic responsibilities were extremely demanding, she wrote poetry which expressed her commitment to the craft of writing. In addition, her work reflects the religious and emotional conflicts she experienced as a woman writer and as a Puritan. Throughout her life Bradstreet was concerned with the issues of sin and redemption, physical and emotional frailty, death and immortality. Much of her work indicates that she had a difficult time resolving the conflict she experienced between the pleasures of sensory and familial experience and the promises of heaven. As a Puritan she struggled to subdue her attachment to the world, but as a woman she sometimes felt more strongly connected to her husband, children, and community than to God.

Bradstreet's earliest extant poem, "Upon a Fit of Sickness, Anno. 1632," written in Newtown when she was 19, outlines the traditional concerns of the Puritan-the brevity of life, the certainty of death, and the hope for salvation: Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, Seneca, and Thucydides as well as Spenser, Sidney, Milton, Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England, and George III is reported to have had the volume in his library. Bradstreet's work has endured, and she is still considered to be one of the most important early American poets.

Although Anne Dudley Bradstreet did not attend school, she received an excellent education from her father, who was widely read- Cotton Mather described Thomas Dudley as a "devourer of books"-and from her extensive reading in the well-stocked library of the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, where she lived while her father was steward from 1619 to 1630. There the young Anne Dudley read

O Bubble blast, how long can'st last?
That always art a breaking,
No sooner blown, but dead and gone,
Ev'n as a word that's speaking.
O whil'st I live, this grace me give,
I doing good may be,
Then death's arrest I shall count best,
because it's thy decree.

Artfully composed in a ballad meter, this poem presents a formulaic account of the transience of earthly experience which underscores the divine imperative to carry out God's will. Although this poem is an exercise in piety, it is not without ambivalence or tension between the flesh and the spirit-tensions which grow more intense as Bradstreet matures.

The complexity of her struggle between love of the world and desire for eternal life is expressed in " Contemplations ," a late poem which many critics consider her best:

Then higher on the glistering Sun I gaz'd
Whose beams was shaded by the leavie Tree,
The more I look'd, the more I grew amaz'd
And softly said, what glory's like to thee?
Soul of this world, this Universes Eye,
No wonder, some made thee a Deity:
Had I not better known, (alas) the same had I

Although this lyrical, exquisitely crafted poem concludes with Bradstreet's statement of faith in an afterlife, her faith is paradoxically achieved by immersing herself in the pleasures of earthly life. This poem and others make it clear that Bradstreet committed herself to the religious concept of salvation because she loved life on earth. Her hope for heaven was an expression of her desire to live forever rather than a wish to transcend worldly concerns. For her, heaven promised the prolongation of earthly joys, rather than a renunciation of those pleasures she enjoyed in life.

Bradstreet wrote many of the poems that appeared in the first edition of ," and "The Four Seasons." Each poem consists of a series of orations; the first by earth, air, fire, and water; the second by choler, blood, melancholy, and flegme; the third by childhood, youth, middle age, and old age; the fourth by spring, summer, fall, and winter. In these quaternions Bradstreet demonstrates a mastery of physiology, anatomy, astronomy, Greek metaphysics, and the concepts of medieval and Renaissance cosmology. Although she draws heavily on Sylvester's translation of du Bartas and Helkiah Crooke's anatomical treatise The Tenth Muse ... during the years 1635 to 1645 while she lived in the frontier town of Ipswich, approximately thirty miles from Boston. In her dedication to the volume written in 1642 to her father, Thomas Dudley, who educated her, encouraged her to read, and evidently appreciated his daughter's intelligence, Bradstreet pays "homage" to him. Many of the poems in this volume tend to be dutiful exercises intended to prove her artistic worth to him. However, much of her work, especially her later poems, demonstrates impressive intelligence and mastery of poetic form.
Microcosmographia (1615), Bradstreet's interpretation of their images is often strikingly dramatic. Sometimes she uses material from her own life in these historical and philosophical discourses. For example, in her description of the earliest age of man, infancy, she forcefully describes the illnesses that assailed her and her children:
The first section of The Tenth Muse ... includes four long poems, known as the quaternions, or "The Four Elements," "The Four Humors of Man," " The Four Ages of Man

What gripes of wind my infancy did pain,
What tortures I in breeding teeth sustain?
What crudityes my stomach cold has bred,
Whence vomits, flux, and worms have issued?

Like the quaternions, the poems in the next section of
The Tenth Muse-"The Four Monarchies" (Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman)-are poems of commanding historical breadth. Bradstreet's poetic version of the rise and fall of these great empires draws largely from Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World (1614). The dissolution of these civilizations is presented as evidence of God's divine plan for the world. Although Bradstreet demonstrates considerable erudition in both the quaternions and monarchies, the rhymed couplets of the poems tend to be plodding and dull; she even calls them "lanke" and "weary" herself. Perhaps she grew tired of the task she set for herself because she did not attempt to complete the fourth section on the "Roman Monarchy" after the incomplete portion was lost in a fire that destroyed the Bradstreet home in 1666.

" Dialogue between Old England and New," also in the 1650 edition of The Tenth Muse ... expresses Bradstreet's concerns with the social and religious turmoil in England that impelled the Puritans to leave their country. The poem is a conversation between mother England and her daughter, New England. The sympathetic tone reveals how deeply attached Bradstreet was to her native land and how disturbed she was by the waste and loss of life caused by the political upheaval. As Old England's lament indicates, the destructive impact of the civil strife on human life was more disturbing to Bradstreet than the substance of the conflict:

O pity me in this sad perturbation,
My plundered Towers, my houses devastation,
My weeping Virgins and my young men slain;
My wealthy trading fall'n, my dearth of grain

In this poem, Bradstreet's voices her own values. There is less imitation of traditional male models and more direct statement of the poet's feelings. As Bradstreet gained experience, she depended less on poetic mentors and relied more on her own perceptions.

Another poem in the first edition of The Tenth Muse ... that reveals Bradstreet's personal feelings is " In Honor of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory," written in 1643, in which she praises the Queen as a paragon of female prowess. Chiding her male readers for trivializing women, Bradstreet refers to the Queen's outstanding leadership and historical prominence. In a personal caveat underscoring her own dislike of patriarchal arrogance, Bradstreet points out that women were not always devalued:

Nay Masculines, you have thus taxt us long,
But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong,
Let such as say our Sex is void of Reason,
Know tis a Slander now, but once was Treason.

These assertive lines mark a dramatic shift from the self-effacing stanzas of "The Prologue" to the volume in which Bradstreet attempted to diminish her stature to prevent her writing from being attacked as an indecorous female activity. In an ironic and often-quoted passage of "The Prologue," she asks for the domestic herbs "Thyme or Parsley wreath," instead of the traditional laurel, thereby appearing to subordinate herself to male writers and critics:

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are
Men have precedency and still excell,
It is but vain unjustly to wage warre;
Men can do best, and women know it well
Preheminence in all and each is yours;
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

In contrast, her portrait of Elizabeth does not attempt to conceal her confidence in the abilities of women:

Who was so good, so just, so learned so wise,
From all the Kings on earth she won the prize.
Nor say I more then duly is her due,
Millions will testifie that this is true.
She has wip'd off th' aspersion of her Sex,
That women wisdome lack to play the Rex

This praise for Queen Elizabeth expresses Bradstreet's conviction that women should not be subordinated to men-certainly it was less stressful to make this statement in a historic context than it would have been to confidently proclaim the worth of her own work.

The first edition of The Tenth Muse ... also contains an elegy to Sir Philip Sidney and a poem honoring du Bartas. Acknowledging her debt to these poetic mentors, she depicts herself as insignificant in contrast to their greatness. They live on the peak of Parnassus while she grovels at the bottom of the mountain. Again, her modest pose represents an effort to ward off potential attackers, but its ironic undercurrents indicate that Bradstreet was angered by the cultural bias against women writers:

Fain would I shew how he same paths did tread,
But now into such Lab'rinths I am lead,
With endless turnes, the way I find not out,
How to persist my Muse is more in doubt;
Which makes me now with Silvester confess,
But Sidney's Muse can sing his worthiness.

Although the ostensible meaning of this passage is that Sidney's work is too complex and intricate for her to follow, it also indicates that Bradstreet felt his labyrinthine lines to represent excessive artifice and lack of connection to life.," "The Flesh and the Spirit," the address by "

The second edition of The Author to her Book," several poems about her various illnesses, love poems to her husband, and elegies of her deceased grandchildren and daughter-in-law. These poems added to the second edition were probably written after the move to Andover, where Anne Bradstreet lived with her family in a spacious three-story house until her death in 1672. Far superior to her early work, the poems in the 1678 edition demonstrate a command over subject matter and a mastery of poetic craft. These later poems are considerably more candid about her spiritual crises and her strong attachment to her family than her earlier work. For example, in a poem to her husband, " Before the Birth of one of her Children," Bradstreet confesses that she is afraid of dying in childbirth-a realistic fear in the 17th century-and begs him to continue to love her after her death. She also implores him to take good care of their children and to protect them from a potential stepmother's cruelty: The Tenth Muse ..., published in Boston in 1678 as Several Poems ..., contains the author's corrections as well as previously unpublished poems: epitaphs to her father and mother, " Contemplations

And when thou feel'st no grief, as I no harms,
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms:
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
Look to my little babes my dear remains.
And if thou love thy self, or love'st me
These O protect from step Dames injury.

Not only is this candid domestic portrait artistically superior to of "The Four Monarchies," it gives a more accurate sense of Bradstreet's true concerns.

In her address to her book, Bradstreet repeats her apology for the defects of her poems, likening them to children dressed in "home-spun." But what she identifies as weakness is actually their strength. Because they are centered in the poet's actual experience as a Puritan and as a woman, the poems are less figurative and contain fewer analogies to well-known male poets than her earlier work. In place of self-conscious imagery is extraordinarily evocative and lyrical language. In some of these poems Bradstreet openly grieves over the loss of her loved ones-her parents, her grandchildren, her sister-in-law-and she barely conceals resentment that God has taken their innocent lives. Although she ultimately capitulates to a supreme being-He knows it is the best for thee and me"-it is the tension between her desire for earthly happiness and her effort to accept God's will that makes these poems especially powerful.

Bradstreet's poems to her husband are often singled out for praise by critics. Simon Bradstreet's responsibilities as a magistrate of the colony frequently took him away from home, and he was very much missed by his wife. Modeled on Elizabethan sonnets, Bradstreet's love poems make it clear that she was deeply attached to her husband:

If ever two were one, then surely we
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man
Compare with me ye women if you can

Marriage was important to the Puritans, who felt that the procreation and proper training of children were necessary for building God's commonwealth. However, the love between wife and husband was not supposed to distract from devotion to God. In Bradstreet's sonnets, her erotic attraction to her husband is central, and these poems are more secular than religious:

My chilled limbs now nummed lye forlorn;
Return, return sweet Sol from Capricorn;
In this dead time, alas, what can I more
Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?

Anne Bradstreet's brother-in-law, John Woodbridge, was responsible for the publication of the first edition of
The Tenth Muse.... The title page reads "By a Gentlewoman in those parts"-and Woodbridge assures readers that the volume "is the work of a Woman, honored and esteemed where she lives." After praising the author's piety, courtesy, and diligence, he explains that she did not shirk her domestic responsibilities in order to write poetry: "these poems are the fruit but of some few hours, curtailed from sleep and other refreshments." Also prefacing the volume are statements of praise for Bradstreet by Nathaniel Ward, the author of The Simple Cobler of Aggawam (1647), and Reverend Benjamin Woodbridge, brother of John Woodbridge. In order to defend her from attacks from reviewers at home and abroad who might be shocked by the impropriety of a female author, these encomiums of the poet stress that she is a virtuous woman.

In 1867, John Harvard Ellis published Bradstreet's complete works, including materials from both editions of The Tenth Muse ... as well as "Religious Experiences and Occasional Pieces" and "Meditations Divine and Morall" that had been in the possession of her son Simon Bradstreet, to whom the meditations had been dedicated on March 20, 1664. Bradstreet's accounts of her religious experience provide insight into the Puritan views of salvation and redemption. Bradstreet describes herself as having been frequently chastened by God through her illnesses and her domestic travails: "Among all my experiences of God's gractious Dealings with me I have constantly observed this, that he has never suffered me long to sit loose from him, but by one affliction or other hath made me look home, and search what was amiss." Puritans perceived suffering as a means of preparing the heart to receive God's grace. Bradstreet writes that she made every effort to submit willingly to God's afflictions which were necessary to her "straying soul which in prosperity is too much in love with the world." These occasional pieces in the Ellis edition also include poems of gratitude to God for protecting her loved ones from illness ("Upon my Daughter Hannah Wiggin her recovering from a dangerous fever") and for her husband's safe return from England. However, these poems do not have the force or power of those published in the second edition of The Tenth Muse ... and seem to be exercises in piety and submission rather than a complex rendering of her experience.

The aphoristic prose paragraphs of "Meditations Divine and Morall" have remarkable vitality, primarily because they are based on her own observations and experiences. While the Bible and the Bay Psalm Book are the source of many of Bradstreet's metaphors, they are reworked to confirm her perceptions: "The spring is a lively emblem of the resurrection, after a long winter we see the leaveless trees and dry stocks (at the approach of the sun) to resume their former vigor and beauty in a more ample manner than when they lost in the Autumn; so shall it be at that great day after a long vacation, when the Sun of righteousness shall appear, those dry bones shall arise in far more glory then that which they lost at their creation, and in this transcends the spring, that their lease shall never fail, nor their sap decline" (40)

Perhaps the most important aspect of Anne Bradstreet's poetic evolution is her increasing confidence in the validity of her personal experience as a source and subject of poetry. Much of the work in the 1650 edition of The Tenth Muse ... suffers from being imitative and strained. The forced rhymes reveal Bradstreet's grim determination to prove that she could write in the lofty style of the established male poets. But her deeper emotions were obviously not engaged in the project. The publication of her first volume of poetry seems to have given her confidence and enabled her to express herself more freely. As she began to write of her ambivalence about the religious issues of faith, grace, and salvation, her poetry became more accomplished.

Bradstreet's recent biographers, Elizabeth Wade White and Ann Stanford, have both observed that Bradstreet was sometimes distressed by the conflicting demands of piety and poetry and was as daring as she could be and still retain respectability in a society that exiled Anne Hutchinson. Bradstreet's poetry reflects the tensions of a woman who wished to express her individuality in a culture that was hostile to personal autonomy and valued poetry only if it praised God. Although Bradstreet never renounced her religious belief, her poetry makes it clear that if it were not for the fact of dissolution and decay, she would not seek eternal life: "for were earthly comforts permanent, who would look for heavenly?"

In a statement of extravagant praise Cotton Mather compared Anne Bradstreet to such famous women as Hippatia, Sarocchia, the three Corinnes, and Empress Eudocia and concluded that her poems have "afforded a grateful Entertainment unto the Ingenious, and a Monument for her Memory beyond the stateliest Marbles." Certainly, Anne Bradstreet's poetry has continued to receive a positive response for more than three centuries, and she has earned her place as one of the most important American women poets.

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Anne Bradstreet was the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet. Her volume of poetry The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America ... received considerable favorable attention when it was first published in London in 1650. Eight years after it appeared it was listed by William...

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In between the years 1633 and 1652 she had eight children and was still continuously writing her poems.

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Anne Bradstreet was the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet. Her volume of poetry , , Hobbes, Joshua Sylvester's 1605 translation of Guillaume du Bartas's The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America ... received considerable favorable attention when it was first published in London in 1650. Eight years after it appeared it was listed by William London in his Plutarch, Livy, Pliny, Suetonius, Divine Weeks and Workes, and the Geneva version of the Bible. In general, she benefited from the Elizabethan tradition that valued female education. In about 1628-the date is not certain-Anne Dudley married Simon Bradstreet, who assisted her father with the management of the Earl's estate in Sempringham. She remained married to him until her death on September 16, 1672. Bradstreet immigrated to the new world with her husband and parents in 1630; in 1633 the first of her children, Samuel, was born, and her seven other children were born between 1635 and 1652: Dorothy (1635), Sarah (1638), Simon (1640), Hannah (1642), Mercy (1645), Dudley (1648), and John (1652).

Although Bradstreet was not happy to exchange the comforts of the aristocratic life of the Earl's manor house for the privations of the New England wilderness, she dutifully joined her father and husband and their families on the Puritan errand into the wilderness. After a difficult three-month crossing, their ship, the Arbella, docked at Salem, Massachusetts, on July 22, 1630. Distressed by the sickness, scarcity of food, and primitive living conditions of the New England outpost, Bradstreet admitted that her "heart rose" in protest against the "new world and new manners." Although she ostensibly reconciled herself to the Puritan mission-she wrote that she "submitted to it and joined the Church at Boston"-Bradstreet remained ambivalent about the issues of salvation and redemption for most of her life.

Once in New England the passengers of the Arbella fleet were dismayed by the sickness and suffering of those colonists who had preceded them. Thomas Dudley observed in a letter to the Countess of Lincoln, who had remained in England: "We found the Colony in a sad and unexpected condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before; and many of those alive weak and sick; all the corn and bread amongst them all hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight." In addition to fevers, malnutrition, and inadequate food supplies, the colonists also had to contend with attacks by Native Americans who originally occupied the colonized land. The Bradstreets and Dudleys shared a house in Salem for many months and lived in spartan style; Thomas Dudley complained that there was not even a table on which to eat or work. In the winter the two families were confined to the one room in which there was a fireplace. The situation was tense as well as uncomfortable, and Anne Bradstreet and her family moved several times in an effort to improve their worldly estates. From Salem they moved to Charlestown, then to Newtown (later called Cambridge), then to Ipswich, and finally to Andover in 1645.

Although Bradstreet had eight children between the years 1633 and 1652, which meant that her domestic responsibilities were extremely demanding, she wrote poetry which expressed her commitment to the craft of writing. In addition, her work reflects the religious and emotional conflicts she experienced as a woman writer and as a Puritan. Throughout her life Bradstreet was concerned with the issues of sin and redemption, physical and emotional frailty, death and immortality. Much of her work indicates that she had a difficult time resolving the conflict she experienced between the pleasures of sensory and familial experience and the promises of heaven. As a Puritan she struggled to subdue her attachment to the world, but as a woman she sometimes felt more strongly connected to her husband, children, and community than to God.

Bradstreet's earliest extant poem, "Upon a Fit of Sickness, Anno. 1632," written in Newtown when she was 19, outlines the traditional concerns of the Puritan-the brevity of life, the certainty of death, and the hope for salvation: Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, Seneca, and Thucydides as well as Spenser, Sidney, Milton, Catalogue of the Most Vendible Books in England, and George III is reported to have had the volume in his library. Bradstreet's work has endured, and she is still considered to be one of the most important early American poets.

Although Anne Dudley Bradstreet did not attend school, she received an excellent education from her father, who was widely read- Cotton Mather described Thomas Dudley as a "devourer of books"-and from her extensive reading in the well-stocked library of the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, where she lived while her father was steward from 1619 to 1630. There the young Anne Dudley read

O Bubble blast, how long can'st last?
That always art a breaking,
No sooner blown, but dead and gone,
Ev'n as a word that's speaking.
O whil'st I live, this grace me give,
I doing good may be,
Then death's arrest I shall count best,
because it's thy decree.

Artfully composed in a ballad meter, this poem presents a formulaic account of the transience of earthly experience which underscores the divine imperative to carry out God's will. Although this poem is an exercise in piety, it is not without ambivalence or tension between the flesh and the spirit-tensions which grow more intense as Bradstreet matures.

The complexity of her struggle between love of the world and desire for eternal life is expressed in " Contemplations ," a late poem which many critics consider her best:

Then higher on the glistering Sun I gaz'd
Whose beams was shaded by the leavie Tree,
The more I look'd, the more I grew amaz'd
And softly said, what glory's like to thee?
Soul of this world, this Universes Eye,
No wonder, some made thee a Deity:
Had I not better known, (alas) the same had I

Although this lyrical, exquisitely crafted poem concludes with Bradstreet's statement of faith in an afterlife, her faith is paradoxically achieved by immersing herself in the pleasures of earthly life. This poem and others make it clear that Bradstreet committed herself to the religious concept of salvation because she loved life on earth. Her hope for heaven was an expression of her desire to live forever rather than a wish to transcend worldly concerns. For her, heaven promised the prolongation of earthly joys, rather than a renunciation of those pleasures she enjoyed in life.

Bradstreet wrote many of the poems that appeared in the first edition of ," and "The Four Seasons." Each poem consists of a series of orations; the first by earth, air, fire, and water; the second by choler, blood, melancholy, and flegme; the third by childhood, youth, middle age, and old age; the fourth by spring, summer, fall, and winter. In these quaternions Bradstreet demonstrates a mastery of physiology, anatomy, astronomy, Greek metaphysics, and the concepts of medieval and Renaissance cosmology. Although she draws heavily on Sylvester's translation of du Bartas and Helkiah Crooke's anatomical treatise The Tenth Muse ... during the years 1635 to 1645 while she lived in the frontier town of Ipswich, approximately thirty miles from Boston. In her dedication to the volume written in 1642 to her father, Thomas Dudley, who educated her, encouraged her to read, and evidently appreciated his daughter's intelligence, Bradstreet pays "homage" to him. Many of the poems in this volume tend to be dutiful exercises intended to prove her artistic worth to him. However, much of her work, especially her later poems, demonstrates impressive intelligence and mastery of poetic form.
Microcosmographia (1615), Bradstreet's interpretation of their images is often strikingly dramatic. Sometimes she uses material from her own life in these historical and philosophical discourses. For example, in her description of the earliest age of man, infancy, she forcefully describes the illnesses that assailed her and her children:
The first section of The Tenth Muse ... includes four long poems, known as the quaternions, or "The Four Elements," "The Four Humors of Man," " The Four Ages of Man

What gripes of wind my infancy did pain,
What tortures I in breeding teeth sustain?
What crudityes my stomach cold has bred,
Whence vomits, flux, and worms have issued?

Like the quaternions, the poems in the next section of
The Tenth Muse-"The Four Monarchies" (Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman)-are poems of commanding historical breadth. Bradstreet's poetic version of the rise and fall of these great empires draws largely from Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World (1614). The dissolution of these civilizations is presented as evidence of God's divine plan for the world. Although Bradstreet demonstrates considerable erudition in both the quaternions and monarchies, the rhymed couplets of the poems tend to be plodding and dull; she even calls them "lanke" and "weary" herself. Perhaps she grew tired of the task she set for herself because she did not attempt to complete the fourth section on the "Roman Monarchy" after the incomplete portion was lost in a fire that destroyed the Bradstreet home in 1666.

" Dialogue between Old England and New," also in the 1650 edition of The Tenth Muse ... expresses Bradstreet's concerns with the social and religious turmoil in England that impelled the Puritans to leave their country. The poem is a conversation between mother England and her daughter, New England. The sympathetic tone reveals how deeply attached Bradstreet was to her native land and how disturbed she was by the waste and loss of life caused by the political upheaval. As Old England's lament indicates, the destructive impact of the civil strife on human life was more disturbing to Bradstreet than the substance of the conflict:

O pity me in this sad perturbation,
My plundered Towers, my houses devastation,
My weeping Virgins and my young men slain;
My wealthy trading fall'n, my dearth of grain

In this poem, Bradstreet's voices her own values. There is less imitation of traditional male models and more direct statement of the poet's feelings. As Bradstreet gained experience, she depended less on poetic mentors and relied more on her own perceptions.

Another poem in the first edition of The Tenth Muse ... that reveals Bradstreet's personal feelings is " In Honor of that High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory," written in 1643, in which she praises the Queen as a paragon of female prowess. Chiding her male readers for trivializing women, Bradstreet refers to the Queen's outstanding leadership and historical prominence. In a personal caveat underscoring her own dislike of patriarchal arrogance, Bradstreet points out that women were not always devalued:

Nay Masculines, you have thus taxt us long,
But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong,
Let such as say our Sex is void of Reason,
Know tis a Slander now, but once was Treason.

These assertive lines mark a dramatic shift from the self-effacing stanzas of "The Prologue" to the volume in which Bradstreet attempted to diminish her stature to prevent her writing from being attacked as an indecorous female activity. In an ironic and often-quoted passage of "The Prologue," she asks for the domestic herbs "Thyme or Parsley wreath," instead of the traditional laurel, thereby appearing to subordinate herself to male writers and critics:

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are
Men have precedency and still excell,
It is but vain unjustly to wage warre;
Men can do best, and women know it well
Preheminence in all and each is yours;
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.

In contrast, her portrait of Elizabeth does not attempt to conceal her confidence in the abilities of women:

Who was so good, so just, so learned so wise,
From all the Kings on earth she won the prize.
Nor say I more then duly is her due,
Millions will testifie that this is true.
She has wip'd off th' aspersion of her Sex,
That women wisdome lack to play the Rex

This praise for Queen Elizabeth expresses Bradstreet's conviction that women should not be subordinated to men-certainly it was less stressful to make this statement in a historic context than it would have been to confidently proclaim the worth of her own work.

The first edition of The Tenth Muse ... also contains an elegy to Sir Philip Sidney and a poem honoring du Bartas. Acknowledging her debt to these poetic mentors, she depicts herself as insignificant in contrast to their greatness. They live on the peak of Parnassus while she grovels at the bottom of the mountain. Again, her modest pose represents an effort to ward off potential attackers, but its ironic undercurrents indicate that Bradstreet was angered by the cultural bias against women writers:

Fain would I shew how he same paths did tread,
But now into such Lab'rinths I am lead,
With endless turnes, the way I find not out,
How to persist my Muse is more in doubt;
Which makes me now with Silvester confess,
But Sidney's Muse can sing his worthiness.

Although the ostensible meaning of this passage is that Sidney's work is too complex and intricate for her to follow, it also indicates that Bradstreet felt his labyrinthine lines to represent excessive artifice and lack of connection to life.," "The Flesh and the Spirit," the address by "

The second edition of The Author to her Book," several poems about her various illnesses, love poems to her husband, and elegies of her deceased grandchildren and daughter-in-law. These poems added to the second edition were probably written after the move to Andover, where Anne Bradstreet lived with her family in a spacious three-story house until her death in 1672. Far superior to her early work, the poems in the 1678 edition demonstrate a command over subject matter and a mastery of poetic craft. These later poems are considerably more candid about her spiritual crises and her strong attachment to her family than her earlier work. For example, in a poem to her husband, " Before the Birth of one of her Children," Bradstreet confesses that she is afraid of dying in childbirth-a realistic fear in the 17th century-and begs him to continue to love her after her death. She also implores him to take good care of their children and to protect them from a potential stepmother's cruelty: The Tenth Muse ..., published in Boston in 1678 as Several Poems ..., contains the author's corrections as well as previously unpublished poems: epitaphs to her father and mother, " Contemplations

And when thou feel'st no grief, as I no harms,
Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms:
And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains
Look to my little babes my dear remains.
And if thou love thy self, or love'st me
These O protect from step Dames injury.

Not only is this candid domestic portrait artistically superior to of "The Four Monarchies," it gives a more accurate sense of Bradstreet's true concerns.

In her address to her book, Bradstreet repeats her apology for the defects of her poems, likening them to children dressed in "home-spun." But what she identifies as weakness is actually their strength. Because they are centered in the poet's actual experience as a Puritan and as a woman, the poems are less figurative and contain fewer analogies to well-known male poets than her earlier work. In place of self-conscious imagery is extraordinarily evocative and lyrical language. In some of these poems Bradstreet openly grieves over the loss of her loved ones-her parents, her grandchildren, her sister-in-law-and she barely conceals resentment that God has taken their innocent lives. Although she ultimately capitulates to a supreme being-He knows it is the best for thee and me"-it is the tension between her desire for earthly happiness and her effort to accept God's will that makes these poems especially powerful.

Bradstreet's poems to her husband are often singled out for praise by critics. Simon Bradstreet's responsibilities as a magistrate of the colony frequently took him away from home, and he was very much missed by his wife. Modeled on Elizabethan sonnets, Bradstreet's love poems make it clear that she was deeply attached to her husband:

If ever two were one, then surely we
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man
Compare with me ye women if you can

Marriage was important to the Puritans, who felt that the procreation and proper training of children were necessary for building God's commonwealth. However, the love between wife and husband was not supposed to distract from devotion to God. In Bradstreet's sonnets, her erotic attraction to her husband is central, and these poems are more secular than religious:

My chilled limbs now nummed lye forlorn;
Return, return sweet Sol from Capricorn;
In this dead time, alas, what can I more
Than view those fruits which through thy heat I bore?

Anne Bradstreet's brother-in-law, John Woodbridge, was responsible for the publication of the first edition of
The Tenth Muse.... The title page reads "By a Gentlewoman in those parts"-and Woodbridge assures readers that the volume "is the work of a Woman, honored and esteemed where she lives." After praising the author's piety, courtesy, and diligence, he explains that she did not shirk her domestic responsibilities in order to write poetry: "these poems are the fruit but of some few hours, curtailed from sleep and other refreshments." Also prefacing the volume are statements of praise for Bradstreet by Nathaniel Ward, the author of The Simple Cobler of Aggawam (1647), and Reverend Benjamin Woodbridge, brother of John Woodbridge. In order to defend her from attacks from reviewers at home and abroad who might be shocked by the impropriety of a female author, these encomiums of the poet stress that she is a virtuous woman.

In 1867, John Harvard Ellis published Bradstreet's complete works, including materials from both editions of The Tenth Muse ... as well as "Religious Experiences and Occasional Pieces" and "Meditations Divine and Morall" that had been in the possession of her son Simon Bradstreet, to whom the meditations had been dedicated on March 20, 1664. Bradstreet's accounts of her religious experience provide insight into the Puritan views of salvation and redemption. Bradstreet describes herself as having been frequently chastened by God through her illnesses and her domestic travails: "Among all my experiences of God's gractious Dealings with me I have constantly observed this, that he has never suffered me long to sit loose from him, but by one affliction or other hath made me look home, and search what was amiss." Puritans perceived suffering as a means of preparing the heart to receive God's grace. Bradstreet writes that she made every effort to submit willingly to God's afflictions which were necessary to her "straying soul which in prosperity is too much in love with the world." These occasional pieces in the Ellis edition also include poems of gratitude to God for protecting her loved ones from illness ("Upon my Daughter Hannah Wiggin her recovering from a dangerous fever") and for her husband's safe return from England. However, these poems do not have the force or power of those published in the second edition of The Tenth Muse ... and seem to be exercises in piety and submission rather than a complex rendering of her experience.

The aphoristic prose paragraphs of "Meditations Divine and Morall" have remarkable vitality, primarily because they are based on her own observations and experiences. While the Bible and the Bay Psalm Book are the source of many of Bradstreet's metaphors, they are reworked to confirm her perceptions: "The spring is a lively emblem of the resurrection, after a long winter we see the leaveless trees and dry stocks (at the approach of the sun) to resume their former vigor and beauty in a more ample manner than when they lost in the Autumn; so shall it be at that great day after a long vacation, when the Sun of righteousness shall appear, those dry bones shall arise in far more glory then that which they lost at their creation, and in this transcends the spring, that their lease shall never fail, nor their sap decline" (40)

Perhaps the most important aspect of Anne Bradstreet's poetic evolution is her increasing confidence in the validity of her personal experience as a source and subject of poetry. Much of the work in the 1650 edition of The Tenth Muse ... suffers from being imitative and strained. The forced rhymes reveal Bradstreet's grim determination to prove that she could write in the lofty style of the established male poets. But her deeper emotions were obviously not engaged in the project. The publication of her first volume of poetry seems to have given her confidence and enabled her to express herself more freely. As she began to write of her ambivalence about the religious issues of faith, grace, and salvation, her poetry became more accomplished.

Bradstreet's recent biographers, Elizabeth Wade White and Ann Stanford, have both observed that Bradstreet was sometimes distressed by the conflicting demands of piety and poetry and was as daring as she could be and still retain respectability in a society that exiled Anne Hutchinson. Bradstreet's poetry reflects the tensions of a woman who wished to express her individuality in a culture that was hostile to personal autonomy and valued poetry only if it praised God. Although Bradstreet never renounced her religious belief, her poetry makes it clear that if it were not for the fact of dissolution and decay, she would not seek eternal life: "for were earthly comforts permanent, who would look for heavenly?"

In a statement of extravagant praise Cotton Mather compared Anne Bradstreet to such famous women as Hippatia, Sarocchia, the three Corinnes, and Empress Eudocia and concluded that her poems have "afforded a grateful Entertainment unto the Ingenious, and a Monument for her Memory beyond the stateliest Marbles." Certainly, Anne Bradstreet's poetry has continued to receive a positive response for more than three centuries, and she has earned her place as one of the most important American women poets.

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Anne Bradstreet was the first woman to be recognized as an accomplished New World Poet. Her volume of poetry The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America ... received considerable favorable attention when it was first published in London in 1650. Eight years after it appeared it was listed by William...

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Anne Bradstreet's poetry collection called The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America was published in London and was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. It was on par with works by Shakespeare and Milton.

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Anne Bradstreet — Finding Anne Bradstreet

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Anne Bradstreet was a seventeenth-century literary sensation. Her book of poetry The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in the New World was a best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic. Eight years after it first hit bookshelves, it remained one of “the most vendible books in England” alongside works by William Shakespeare and John Milton.

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At a young age he began to experiment with a new style of poetry and by 1855 he had enough poems in his new style for a thin volume.

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Walt Whitman, in full Walter Whitman, (born May 31, 1819, West Hills, Long Island, New York, U.S.-died March 26, 1892, Camden, New Jersey), American poet, journalist, and essayist whose verse collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, is a landmark in the history of American literature.

Early life

Walt Whitman was born into a family that settled in North America in the first half of the 17th century. His ancestry was typical of the region: his mother, Louisa Van Velsor, was Dutch, and his father, Walter Whitman, was of English descent. They were farm people with little formal education. The Whitman family had at one time owned a large tract of land, but it was so diminished by the time Walt was born that his father had taken up carpentering, though the family still lived on a small section of the ancestral estate. In 1823 Walter Whitman, Sr., moved his growing family to Brooklyn, which was enjoying a boom. There he speculated in real estate and built cheap houses for artisans, but he was a poor manager and had difficulty in providing for his family, which increased to nine children.

Walt, the second child, attended public school in Brooklyn, began working at the age of 12, and learned the printing trade. He was employed as a printer in Brooklyn and New York City, taught in country schools on Long Island, and became a journalist. At the age of 23 he edited a daily newspaper in New York, and in 1846 he became editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a fairly important newspaper of the time. Discharged from the Eagle early in 1848 because of his support for the antislavery Free Soil faction of the Democratic Party, he went to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he worked for three months on the Crescent before returning to New York via the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. After another abortive attempt at Free Soil journalism, he built houses and dabbled in real estate in New York from about 1850 until 1855.

Whitman had spent a great deal of his 36 years walking and observing in New York City and Long Island. He had visited the theatre frequently and seen many plays of William Shakespeare, and he had developed a strong love of music, especially opera. During these years, he had also read extensively at home and in the New York libraries, and he began experimenting with a new style of poetry. While a schoolteacher, printer, and journalist, he had published sentimental stories and poems in newspapers and popular magazines, but they showed almost no literary promise.

By the spring of 1855 Whitman had enough poems in his new style for a thin volume. Unable to find a publisher, he sold a house and printed the first edition of Leaves of Grass at his own expense. No publisher's name and no author's name appeared on the first edition in 1855. But the cover had a portrait of Walt Whitman, "broad-shouldered, rouge-fleshed, Bacchus-browed, bearded like a satyr," as Bronson Alcott described him in a journal entry in 1856. Though little appreciated upon its appearance, Leaves of Grass was warmly praised by the poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote to Whitman on receiving the poems that it was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom" America had yet contributed.

Whitman continued practicing his new style of writing in his private notebooks, and in 1856 the second edition of Leaves of Grass appeared. This collection contained revisions of the poems of the first edition and a new one, the "Sun-down Poem" (later to become "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"). The second edition was also a financial failure, and once again Whitman edited a daily newspaper, the Brooklyn Times, but was unemployed by the summer of 1859. In 1860 a Boston publisher brought out the third edition of Leaves of Grass, greatly enlarged and rearranged, but the outbreak of the American Civil War bankrupted the firm. The 1860 volume contained the "Calamus" poems, which record a personal crisis of some intensity in Whitman's life, an apparent homosexual love affair (whether imagined or real is unknown), and "Premonition" (later entitled "Starting from Paumanok"), which records the violent emotions that often drained the poet's strength. "A Word out of the Sea" (later entitled "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking") evoked some sombre feelings, as did "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Chants Democratic," "Enfans d'Adam," "Messenger Leaves," and "Thoughts" were more in the poet's earlier vein.

After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Whitman's brother was wounded at Fredericksburg, and Whitman went there in 1862, staying some time in the camp, then taking a temporary post in the paymaster's office in Washington. He spent his spare time visiting wounded and dying soldiers in the Washington hospitals, spending his scanty salary on small gifts for Confederate and Union soldiers alike and offering his usual "cheer and magnetism" to try to alleviate some of the mental depression and bodily suffering he saw in the wards.

In January 1865 he became a clerk in the Department of the Interior; in May he was promoted but in June was dismissed because the secretary of the Interior thought that Leaves of Grass was indecent. Whitman then obtained a post in the attorney general's office, largely through the efforts of his friend the journalist William O'Connor, who wrote a vindication of Whitman in The Good Gray Poet (published in 1866), which aroused sympathy for the victim of injustice.

In May 1865 a collection of war poems entitled Drum-Taps showed Whitman's readers a new kind of poetry, in free verse, moving from the oratorical excitement with which he had greeted the falling-in and arming of the young men at the beginning of the Civil War to a disturbing awareness of what war really meant. "Beat! Beat! Drums!" echoed the bitterness of the first of the battles of Bull Run, and "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night" had a new awareness of suffering, no less effective for its quietly plangent quality. The Sequel to Drum-Taps, published in the autumn of 1865, contained "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," his great elegy on Pres. Abraham Lincoln. Whitman's horror at the death of democracy's first "great martyr chief " was matched by his revulsion from the barbarities of war. Whitman's prose descriptions of the Civil War, published later in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-83), are no less effective in their direct, moving simplicity.

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Walt Whitman | Biography, Poems, Leaves of Grass, & Facts

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Walt Whitman, American poet, journalist and essayist whose verse collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, is a landmark in the history of American literature. His aim was to transcend traditional epics and to eschew normal aesthetic form.

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In 1865 he became a clerk in the Department of the Interior, he was promoted in May but dismissed in June because the secretary thought that his poem The Leaves of Grass was indecent.

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Walt Whitman, in full Walter Whitman, (born May 31, 1819, West Hills, Long Island, New York, U.S.-died March 26, 1892, Camden, New Jersey), American poet, journalist, and essayist whose verse collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, is a landmark in the history of American literature.

Early life

Walt Whitman was born into a family that settled in North America in the first half of the 17th century. His ancestry was typical of the region: his mother, Louisa Van Velsor, was Dutch, and his father, Walter Whitman, was of English descent. They were farm people with little formal education. The Whitman family had at one time owned a large tract of land, but it was so diminished by the time Walt was born that his father had taken up carpentering, though the family still lived on a small section of the ancestral estate. In 1823 Walter Whitman, Sr., moved his growing family to Brooklyn, which was enjoying a boom. There he speculated in real estate and built cheap houses for artisans, but he was a poor manager and had difficulty in providing for his family, which increased to nine children.

Walt, the second child, attended public school in Brooklyn, began working at the age of 12, and learned the printing trade. He was employed as a printer in Brooklyn and New York City, taught in country schools on Long Island, and became a journalist. At the age of 23 he edited a daily newspaper in New York, and in 1846 he became editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a fairly important newspaper of the time. Discharged from the Eagle early in 1848 because of his support for the antislavery Free Soil faction of the Democratic Party, he went to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he worked for three months on the Crescent before returning to New York via the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. After another abortive attempt at Free Soil journalism, he built houses and dabbled in real estate in New York from about 1850 until 1855.

Whitman had spent a great deal of his 36 years walking and observing in New York City and Long Island. He had visited the theatre frequently and seen many plays of William Shakespeare, and he had developed a strong love of music, especially opera. During these years, he had also read extensively at home and in the New York libraries, and he began experimenting with a new style of poetry. While a schoolteacher, printer, and journalist, he had published sentimental stories and poems in newspapers and popular magazines, but they showed almost no literary promise.

By the spring of 1855 Whitman had enough poems in his new style for a thin volume. Unable to find a publisher, he sold a house and printed the first edition of Leaves of Grass at his own expense. No publisher's name and no author's name appeared on the first edition in 1855. But the cover had a portrait of Walt Whitman, "broad-shouldered, rouge-fleshed, Bacchus-browed, bearded like a satyr," as Bronson Alcott described him in a journal entry in 1856. Though little appreciated upon its appearance, Leaves of Grass was warmly praised by the poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote to Whitman on receiving the poems that it was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom" America had yet contributed.

Whitman continued practicing his new style of writing in his private notebooks, and in 1856 the second edition of Leaves of Grass appeared. This collection contained revisions of the poems of the first edition and a new one, the "Sun-down Poem" (later to become "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"). The second edition was also a financial failure, and once again Whitman edited a daily newspaper, the Brooklyn Times, but was unemployed by the summer of 1859. In 1860 a Boston publisher brought out the third edition of Leaves of Grass, greatly enlarged and rearranged, but the outbreak of the American Civil War bankrupted the firm. The 1860 volume contained the "Calamus" poems, which record a personal crisis of some intensity in Whitman's life, an apparent homosexual love affair (whether imagined or real is unknown), and "Premonition" (later entitled "Starting from Paumanok"), which records the violent emotions that often drained the poet's strength. "A Word out of the Sea" (later entitled "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking") evoked some sombre feelings, as did "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life," "Chants Democratic," "Enfans d'Adam," "Messenger Leaves," and "Thoughts" were more in the poet's earlier vein.

After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Whitman's brother was wounded at Fredericksburg, and Whitman went there in 1862, staying some time in the camp, then taking a temporary post in the paymaster's office in Washington. He spent his spare time visiting wounded and dying soldiers in the Washington hospitals, spending his scanty salary on small gifts for Confederate and Union soldiers alike and offering his usual "cheer and magnetism" to try to alleviate some of the mental depression and bodily suffering he saw in the wards.

In January 1865 he became a clerk in the Department of the Interior; in May he was promoted but in June was dismissed because the secretary of the Interior thought that Leaves of Grass was indecent. Whitman then obtained a post in the attorney general's office, largely through the efforts of his friend the journalist William O'Connor, who wrote a vindication of Whitman in The Good Gray Poet (published in 1866), which aroused sympathy for the victim of injustice.

In May 1865 a collection of war poems entitled Drum-Taps showed Whitman's readers a new kind of poetry, in free verse, moving from the oratorical excitement with which he had greeted the falling-in and arming of the young men at the beginning of the Civil War to a disturbing awareness of what war really meant. "Beat! Beat! Drums!" echoed the bitterness of the first of the battles of Bull Run, and "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night" had a new awareness of suffering, no less effective for its quietly plangent quality. The Sequel to Drum-Taps, published in the autumn of 1865, contained "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," his great elegy on Pres. Abraham Lincoln. Whitman's horror at the death of democracy's first "great martyr chief " was matched by his revulsion from the barbarities of war. Whitman's prose descriptions of the Civil War, published later in Specimen Days & Collect (1882-83), are no less effective in their direct, moving simplicity.

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Walt Whitman | Biography, Poems, Leaves of Grass, & Facts

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Walt Whitman, American poet, journalist and essayist whose verse collection Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, is a landmark in the history of American literature. His aim was to transcend traditional epics and to eschew normal aesthetic form.

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While Walt Whitman's poetry failed to garner popular attention from his American readership during his lifetime, over 1,000 people came to view his funeral.

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Walt Whitman is America's world poet-a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. In Leaves of Grass (1855, 1891-2), he celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and reassurance even in death. Along with Emily Dickinson, Whitman is regarded as one of America's most significant 19th-century poets and would influence later many poets, including Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Simon Ortiz, C.K. Williams, and Martín Espada.

Born on Long Island, Whitman grew up in Brooklyn and received limited formal education. His occupations during his lifetime included printer, schoolteacher, reporter, and editor. Whitman's self-published Leaves of Grass was inspired in part by his travels through the American frontier and by his admiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson. This important publication underwent eight subsequent editions during his lifetime as Whitman expanded and revised the poetry and added more to the original collection of 12 poems. Emerson himself declared the first edition was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed."

Whitman published his own enthusiastic review of Leaves of Grass. Critics and readers alike, however, found both Whitman's style and subject matter unnerving. According to The Longman Anthology of Poetry, "Whitman received little public acclaim for his poems during his lifetime for several reasons: this openness regarding sex, his self-presentation as a rough working man, and his stylistic innovations." A poet who "abandoned the regular meter and rhyme patterns" of his contemporaries, Whitman was "influenced by the long cadences and rhetorical strategies of Biblical poetry." Upon publishing Leaves of Grass, Whitman was subsequently fired from his job with the Department of the Interior. Despite his mixed critical reception in the US, he was favorably received in England, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne among the British writers who celebrated his work.

During the Civil War, Whitman worked as a clerk in Washington, DC. For three years, he visited soldiers during his spare time, dressing wounds and giving solace to the injured. These experiences led to the poems in his 1865 publication, Drum-Taps, which includes, " When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," Whitman's elegy for President Lincoln.

After suffering a serious stroke in 1873, Whitman moved to his brother's home in Camden, New Jersey. While his poetry failed to garner popular attention from his American readership during his lifetime, over 1,000 people came to view his funeral. And as the first writer of a truly American poetry, Whitman's legacy endures.

You can read and inspect many of Whitman's books, letters, and manuscripts at the Walt Whitman Archive, a digital edition at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, directed by Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price.

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Walt Whitman is America's world poet-a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. In Leaves of Grass (1855, 1891-2), he celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and reassurance...

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as we know it