The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

290 Chapter 10 The Making of Middle-Class America

He had a remarkable ear for rendering common
speech poetically, for employing slang, and for catch-
ing the breezy informality of Americans and their
faith in themselves:

Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,

Say, old top-knot, what do you want?

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass

I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

Source: Walt Whitman “Song of Myself.”

Because of these qualities and because in his later
work, especially during the Civil War, he occasionally
struck a popular chord, Whitman was never as
neglected as Melville. When he died in 1892, he was,
if not entirely understood, at least widely appreciated.

Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grassat
myhistorylab.com

Reading and the Dissemination of Culture

As the population grew and became more concen-
trated, and as society, especially in the North, was per-
meated by a middle-class point of view, popular
concern for “culture” in the formal sense increased. A
largely literate people, committed to the idea of edu-
cation but not generally well-educated, set their hearts
on being “refined” and “cultivated.” Industrialization

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made it easier to satisfy this new demand for culture,

though the new machines also tended to make the

artifacts of culture more stereotyped.

Improved printing techniques reduced the cost of

books, magazines, and newspapers. In the 1850s one

publisher sold a fifty-volume set of Sir Walter Scott for

$37.50. The first penny newspaper was the New York

Sun(1833), but James Gordon Bennett’sNew York

Herald, founded in 1835, brought the cheap new

journalism to perfection. The Boston Daily Timesand

the Philadelphia Public Ledger soon followed. The

penny newspapers depended on sensation, crime sto-

ries, and society gossip to attract readers, but they cov-

ered important national and international news too.

In the 1850s the moralistic and sentimental

“domestic” novel entered its prime. The most success-

ful writers in this genre were women, which prompted

Hawthorne to complain bitterly that “a d——d mob of

scribbling women” was taking over American literature.

Typical of them was Susan Warner, whoseThe Wide,

Wide World(1850) was the sad tale of a pious, submis-

sive girl who cried “more readily and more steadily”

than any other tormented child in a novel at the time.

Besides reading countless volumes of sentimen-

tal romances (the books of another novelist, Mary

Jane Holmes, sold over a million copies in these

years), Americans consumed reams of religious litera-

ture. In 1840 the American Tract Society distributed

3 million copies of its publications and in 1855,

more than 12 million. The society had hundreds of

Landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing conceived of nature as a balm “to soften and humanize” people whose nerves had been rubbed
raw by city life. Central Park in New York City was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1858, both disciples of Downing. Note
how manmade structures harmonized with the setting: The bridge reiterates the curves found in nature. This idyllic conception conflicted with
the wishes of workers who flocked to Central Park to play baseball or listen to band concerts.