Americans In The Late 19th Century Essay

Although America up to the nineteenth century is a nation full of bustling people living their own separate and original lives, people today look at the past with a narrow and romanticized perspective. It is easy to stereotype and stigmatize people who live in certain eras because they will never be known-- they are defined by the events they live through. However, it is possible to rediscover that time does not change what makes everyone human. Americans of the past defend themselves through their literature; their stories and poems prove that although today their language is considered formal and their clothes too frilly, they still have the same kind of hopes, dreams, and goals that are present in the twenty-first century. The first half of American history can
be divided into three fractions: the early years to the American revolution, the original government to the War of 1812, and lastly the Era of Good Feelings to the Civil War. From the moment the first Mongolian tribes crossed into the North American tundra to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, American has been a land for all looking to live a prosperous life free from oppression. Americans are defined by their immigrant heritage and distinct cultural regions; traits that allow America to gain the reputation of being a welcoming new home to neighboring nations. The Native Americans who first call the unclaimed land home are not only immigrants, but are open to sharing the land with European newcomers on their first meeting. As Europeans establish colonies, the settlers and Native Americans war with each other to achieve their common goal: to provide the land and resources both sides’ peoples need. As their goal becomes harder to accomplish due to Britain’s overbearing authority, the colonists fight to maintain their rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The colonists assimilate Native survival tactics into their work and divide into three regions based on imports, religion, male to female ratio, and field of work; less than a century later, colonists reorganize themselves again, this time into North and South. The regions are homogenous in political affiliation due to different forms of labor and are divided by economic affairs. America enters the nineteenth century as a new nation led by a new president. The United States exists for barely two decades and the nation has already split into parties, each with their own set of scandals and self-serving agendas. The American citizens know that they want freedom, but limiting liberty proves to be more difficult than they thought; Americans take sides over every federal decision: the ratification of the Constitution, the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase, until Americans finally take divisive action in the aftermath of the War of 1812.
The Americans create Constitutions and laws laying out what can and cannot be done; however, when it comes to the implied responsibilities of the federal government, state governments, and the American people, the nation reduces to a state of near anarchy. The one thing everyone can agree upon is the right to free speech, that is, until the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts limits that privilege as well. During the early nineteenth century, Americans take on the dysfunctional couple trope, they create the on-again-off-again relationship America is infamous for. During the first decades though, the United States has not grown into the melting pot of cultures found in contemporary times. Harsh boundaries separate Americans regionally. What appears on the surface as Federalist and Democratic Republican conglomerations, is based on economic standings and environmental surroundings. One of the reasons the South later decides to secede and begin the Civil War is Henry Clay’s American System, which increases the manufacturing industry in the North (payed for by the South) and diminishes the South’s agricultural imports and exports. Americans at the turn of the century
want only to live a God-fearing, law-abiding, economically successful life; however, because of skewed perspectives of what the law entails and of plans for the success for one group, regardless of the ramifications for another, the citizens of the United States find themselves forced to band together, and away from one another. Reformers of the Romantic Era took advantage of the natural flow of change that happens as a country ages and took the opportunity to fix everything wrong with American society. Dark Romantic, Nathaniel Hawthorne explicitly writes about the hypocrisy of the religiously zealous colonies, abolitionists combat the institution of slavery, and Abraham Lincoln literally fights a war to keep the nation together. Americans who do not work at factories and therefore have an abundance of free time host conventions and rally protests to fix all the issues they perceive fixable. This time in America is soon defined as the age of reformation, a snowball that fluctuates in speeds, but has never truly stopped. The people of this time work to create what they deem a utopian society, but still always find more cracks to mend; it is while attending an abolitionists convention that the women’s rights movement is started by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. America is nowhere near perfect and the era can be arguably summed up in a quote by Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau: “the fault-finder will find faults even in paradise” (13). One issue is seen by all, but little to no measures are done to prevent it; secession ultimately proves that the middle class Americans’ dream of a perfect society is not to come true anytime soon. Lincoln fights to keep America together legally, but like the abolition movement, the women’s rights movement, and in a way, the Transcendentalists’ movement: saying that everything can be fixed and that everyone will be alright and equal does not make everything better. The reformation era introduces into American society a lesson relevant from Teotihuacan to Trump: equality does not mean people will be treated equally. Although this moral is learned throughout America, nobody gives up fighting for what they believe in, and that is the true takeaway of Antebellum America. Seeing an experiment proved and proved again, never changes anything. To get closer to the idyllic society dreamed up by reformers of yesterday and today, progressive thinkers need to consider that equality will never be equality and change their strategy to keep the America together.