Emerson and Thoreau

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American lecturer and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century and was a proponent of individualism and critic of societal pressures. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was also an American poet, but also an abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, historian and part of the Transcendentalist movement. To understand both of these men and their ideas, it is first necessary to place them in context with the historical and cultural aspects of America from 1820 on. The United States was moving from a climate of revolutionary fervor and realization of the vast task of self-rule, through a Jeffersonian period in which much of the political and social power gravitated from the northern capitals to the larger, rural estates of the Mid-Atlantic and Southern Regions. Jackson epitomized the idea of a land-baron; wealthy, intelligent, politically astute, patriotic, and ever expansionist. However, for...
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