The writings of the Transcendentalists and those of contemporaries such as Walt WhitmanHerman Melvilleand Nathaniel Hawthornefor whom they prepared the ground, represent the first flowering of the American artistic genius and introduced the American Renaissance in literature see also American literature: American Renaissance.
Coupled with the growing unease over slavery and the economy, the intellectual climate simply no longer supported the high-minded idealism of the Transcendentalists.
Transcendentalism provided Thoreau with a different view on humanity and religion. Thoreau was arrested in for nonpayment of his poll tax, and he took the opportunity presented by his night in jail to meditate on the authority of the state.
We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example.
Fuller was in Europe from —9, sending back hundreds of pages for the Tribune. Army into the Cherokee Nation, where they rounded up as many remaining members of the tribe as they could and marched them west and across the Mississippi.
Transcendentalists differed somewhat from the Romantics in that they ultimately wanted to effect change, both personally and globally. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! Many leaders throughout this movement expressed their beliefs and ideas through writing.
Written by Josh Rahn. Nature can show that "all good things are wild and free. German philosophy and literature was also championed by Thomas Carlyle, whom Emerson met on his first trip to Europe in The experience of his arrest served as the inspiration for an essay which would later be known as Civil Disobedience.