The poetry, essays, speeches, short stories, and novels of the men and women of the American Renaissance are a wonderful resource for exploring the thinking of the age. Especially for courses with an American studies orientation, some familiarity with the literature will be of great value. The paintings of the period--by Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and others--are also worth viewing and discussing, which can most easily be arranged in cooperation with the college or university art department. Students will benefit from consulting Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life (1991). A fifty-two-minute video on depicting the West is available from Films from the Humanities and Sciences. The Romantic Horizon follows the path of Lewis and Clark, revealing the new lands through the eyes of George Catlin and others.

The story of the transportation revolution and urbanization is a continuing one, and the drama increases in the later years of this period. Instructors will probably wish to consider the use of pictures, railroad songs, and the like further along in the year in relation to developments in transportation, when students are able to see the story whole.

There are some interesting books of city photographs and old postcards. They include Robert Reed, Old Washington, D.C. in Early Photographs, 1846-1914 (1980); G. R. Fardon, San Francisco in the 1850s: 33 Photographic Views (1977); and Robert F. Looney, Old Philadelphia in Early Photographs, 1839-1914 (1976).
Document Set 11-1

Modernization and Social Change in The Antebellum Era

1. Manufactures Summary: 1849 to 1954
2. Railroad Mileage and Equipment: 1830 to 1890
3. Patent Applications Filed and Patents Issued, by Type and by Patentee: 1790 to 1879
4. An Anonymous Endorsement of Scientific Agriculture, 1858
5. American Technology as an Influence Abroad, 1859
6. A Senate Report Measures the Railroads' Economic Significance, 1852
7. A Trade Journal Outlines Technology's Impact on the Work Process in the Shoe Industry, 1864
8. Robert Owen's Alternative to Industrial Degradation, 1845Historian Douglas Miller has accurately portrayed American social, economic, and cultural development in the 1830s and 1840s as the "birth of modern America." The text strikes a similar theme in Chapter 11 by emphasizing the centrality of technological innovation in understanding antebellum culture, including the modernity of its social and economic underpinnings. Instructors will want to focus on the concept of technology and link it with the optimism that penetrated American life in an expansionary period.While exploring the relationship between perceptions of benevolent technology and the perfectability of humankind, instructors could also guide student discussion toward a sophisticated awareness of the ambivalent feelings spawned by industrial and agricultural modernization. Thus, consideration of the documents would reveal not only the benefits conferred but also the questions raised by the explosion of technology. The paradox may be introduced through parallel exploration of Robert Owen's proposal and the description of the technological revolution in the shoemaking industry.One approach to the topic would be to assign student critiques of the new industrial and technological order; with the class divided, students could prepare reactions to technology and its consequences from the perspective of either an entrepreneur or a mechanic. In either case the critique would reflect the changes brought to the observer's life as a result of modernization. This assignment and the discussion of conflicting viewpoints should also allow the instructor to introduce the concept of artisan republicanism as a reaction to social change. In this connection instructors will find in the documents adequate source material to stimulate debate over technology's allegedly democratic implications.Another analytical tool would be the use of local history to reveal the impact of technology in the antebellum era. Students may be asked to examine individual communities as laboratories for an understanding of socioeconomic change. Research teams might be asked to explore labor, public services, transportation, or other forces that changed a city or town. In some communities on-site investigation will encourage students to read the "built environment" as artifactual evidence.Whatever the classroom approach, the instructor will find that the documents raise important issues for discussion. This chapter provides valuable material with which to probe ambivalence toward social change and to explore the roots of the technological icon in American culture. Instructors may also establish past-present linkage with a discussion of the relationship between nineteenth-century optimism and the persistent but dubious modern assumption that technology holds the answers to all economic and social problems. Equally provocative is the question of technology's uncertain relationship with progressive and democratic thought.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 11-1


Gary Cross and Rick Szostak. Technology and American Society: A History (1995).

Alan Dawley. Class and Community: The Industrial Revolution in Lynn (1976).

Herbert Gutman. Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in Working Class and Social History (1977).

H. J. Habakkuk. American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century (1962).

David Freeman Hawke. Nuts and Bolts of the Past: A History of American Technology, 1790-1860 (1988).

David A. Hounshell. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932 (1984).

David J. Jeremy. Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technology Between Britain and America, 1790-1830 (1981).

John F. Kasson. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America 1776-1900 (1976).

Nathan Rosenberg. Technology and American Economic Growth (1972).

Darwin H. Stapleton. The Transfer of Early Industrial Technologies to America (1987).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 11-1


Beginnings and Growth of Industrial America (film--10 min.). Coronet Instructional Films, 65 E. South Water Street, Chicago, Ill. 60601.

The Early Industrialization of America (facsimiles of historical documents). Jackdaw Publications, P.O. Box 503, Amawalk, N.Y. 10501.

Inventions in American Growth, 1750-1850 (film--9 min.). Coronet Instructional Films, 65 E. South Water Street, Chicago, Ill. 60601.

Money on the Land (videotape film--52 min.). American Series, Episode 8. Time-Life Films, 110 Eisenhower Drive, P.O. Box 644, Paramus, N.J. 07652.

Railroads and Westward Expansion, 1800-1845 (film--14 min.). Phoenix/BFA Films and Video, Inc., 468 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016.
Document Set 11-2

Health Issues as Social Concern: Physical Well-Being and The Quality of Life, 1840-1860

1. A Commission Plan for Public Health in Massachusetts, 1850
2. A Plea for Physical Fitness, 1858
3. Dorothea Dix Calls for Humane Treatment of the Mentally Ill, 1843
4. The Wonders of Phrenology Revealed, 1841
5. Phrenology Draws an Enthusiastic Endorsement, 1840Instructors may want to relate the health issues explored in Chapter 11 to the social reforms discussed in Document Set 10-2. The health craze revealed in this document set may be used to establish the link between public health concerns and the broader passion for social improvement so evident in antebellum America. Similarly, close examination of the evidence should reveal the goals of elite groups and middle-class reformers intent on reshaping working-class life and values. Students should also be reminded of the optimism and inventiveness that characterized proponents of reform.One approach to discussion might focus on the tension between individual and corporate responsibility for improving physical well-being and environmental conditions. Instructors may ask students what separated the philosophies of the Massachusetts report and the ideas in the Atlantic Monthly article. Discussion should emphasize the solutions put forward at that time, and students should be informed that the Massachusetts reforms (including both public health and institutional care for the insane) were, in fact, implemented.Students could also be asked to relate the health concerns expressed in the documents in set 11-2 to the consequences of the new technology explored in set 11-1. Reference might be made to the results of industrialism dealt with in Chapter 9; in this connection instructors may encourage students to look for evidence of the social tensions and cultural clashes that attended urbanization. These documents, especially the report of the Massachusetts public health commission, should enable students to understand the human price paid for modernization and the roots of the search for a higher quality of life, thus illuminating one of the principal themes in Chapter 11.One of the characteristics of an increasingly science-oriented culture was the quest for rational explanations of human behavior and individual differences. For some Americans the pseudo-science of phrenology provided answers that, as noted in the text, were persuasive for those who endorsed the ideas of Gall, Spurzheim, and their interpreters. The journal excerpts will enable instructors to engage students in discussion of phrenology's long-term implications (with regard to alleged black and female capabilities, for example). Moreover, speculation on the reasons for phrenology's widespread acceptance should produce lively debate. As students consider the needs met by this explanation of human character, they will gain understanding of American life and culture in the antebellum years as well as the roots of the society and people that we have become.

Recommended Readings for Document Set 11-2


Gert H. Brieger. "Sanitary Reform in New York City: Stephen Smith and the Passage of the Metropolitan Health Bill." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 40 (Sept.-Oct. 1966): 407-429.

John D. Davies. Phrenology: Fad and Science (1955).

Clifford S. Griffen. The Ferment of Reform, 1830-1860 (1967).

Gerald Grob. Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (1981).

John S. Haller, Jr. American Medicine in Transition, 1840-1910 (1981).

Orlando F. Lewis. The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs, 1776-1845 (1922).

Stephen Nissenbaum. Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jackson American: Sylvester Graham and Health Reform (1980).

David Rothman. Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (1971).

Paul Starr. The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982).

Ronald Walters. American Reformers, 1815-1860 (rev., 1997).
Audiovisual Resources for Document Set 11-2


Freedom's Ferment (audiotape--30 min.). Audiotape Program 10, Annenberg/CPB Project American History Series. Annenberg/CPB Project, 1111 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036.

Reform Crusade, 1830-1860 (sound filmstrip). Educational Audio-Visual, Pleasantville, N.Y. 10570.