Monday

Continue with Jacksonian Democracy

Read and explore The County Vote on this EDSITEment website- George Caleb Bingham 1854        The County Vote 

For each image, before answering the content-specific questions listed below, we recommend that you conduct a general analysis using the following four-step procedure.

1. Visual Inventory: Describe the image, beginning with the largest, most obvious features and proceed toward more particular details. Describe fully, without making evaluations. What do you see? What is the setting? What is the time of day, the season of the year, the region of the country? 

2. Documentation: Note what you know about the work. Who made it? When? Where? What is its title? How was it made? What were the circumstances of its creation? How was it received? 

3. Associations: Begin to make evaluations and draw conclusions using observations and prior knowledge. How does this image relate to its historical and cultural framework? Does it invite comparison or correlation with historical or literary texts? Do you detect a point of view or a mood conveyed by the image? Does it present any unexplained or difficult aspects? Does it trigger an emotional response in you as a viewer? What associations (historical, literary, cultural, artistic) enrich your viewing of this image?

4. Interpretation: Develop an interpretation of the work which both recognizes its specific features and also places it in a larger historical or thematic context.

What is an American?

In Letters From An American Farmer, J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur  asked:

What then is the American, this new man?...He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He has become an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all races are melted into a new race of man, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims. (from "Letter III," 1782) 

How did De Tocqueville answer this questions years later?

"America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. … No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do."
—Alexis de Tocqueville

Reading:  Excerpts from Democracy in America, by Alexis De Tocqueville, and look at the following websites: De Tocqueville and Democracy in America.  Consider: Who was Alexis De Tocqueville and what did he think was distinctive about America?

End of the Neoclassical Republic, Jackson as Caesar - Keynote Presentation

HT Discussion: Is Jackson a tyrant?

Bank Crisis

Nullification Crisis

Indian Removal Act

Homework- Read “Self-Reliance” and answer the questions. 

Tuesday

Transcendentalism - Keynote

The Politics of “Self-Reliance"

“While “Self-Reliance” deals extensively with theological matters, we cannot overlook its political significance. It appeared in 1841, just four years after President Andrew Jackson left office. In the election of 1828 Jackson forged an alliance among the woodsmen and farmers of the western frontier and the laborers of eastern cities. (See the America in Class® lesson “The Expansion of Democracy during the Jacksonian Era.”) Emerson opposed the Jacksonians over specific policies, chiefly their defense of slavery and their support for the expulsion of Indians from their territories. But he objected to them on broader grounds as well. Many people like Emerson, who despite his noncomformist thought still held many of the political views of the old New England elite from which he sprang, feared that the rise of the Jacksonian electorate would turn American democracy into mob rule. In fact, at one point in “Self-Reliance” he proclaims “now we are a mob.” When you see the word “mob” here, do not picture a large, threatening crowd. Instead, think of what we today would call mass society, a society whose culture and politics are shaped not by the tastes and opinions of a small, narrow elite but rather by those of a broad, diverse population.”

Introduction to “Self-Reliance"

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope."

Review answers to questions and discuss excerpts. 

Homework- Read excerpts from Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” and answer the questions in the packet. I will check these tomorrow.

Wednesday 

Discuss “Civil Disobedience”

Homework- Study for the test!! 

Thursday

Test - Market economy, Romanticism, Jacksonian Democracy, and Transcendentalism.

Homework- Read about the background for Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal speech.

Friday

Review of rhetorical analysis format.

Rhetorical Analysis of Jackson’s speech

Homework- TBA.