American Romanticism 1800 - 1860
Pages 136-405

You should be able to discuss how major events reflected the times, and how they shaped the way people understood the world they lived in.

Slavery

The Missouri Compromise, 1820-21
The Underground Railroad, c 1830
Republican Party organized to oppose slavery, 1854
Dred Scott decision, U.S. Supreme Court, 1854

Technology and Industry

The cotton gin, 1794
The Erie Canal connects the Great Lakes and the Atlantic, 1825

Sense of Nation

The Louisiana Purchase, 1803
Cherokee Trail of Tears, 1838
US annexes Texas (1845), Mexican War, 1846-48
Lincoln-Douglas Debates, 1858

Sense of Society

Irish Potato Famine and Irish immigration, 1846
California Gold Rush, 1849

Sense of the World

The War of 1812, leading to the British burning Washington, D.C., 1814
Through the Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong is opened to foreign trade, 1842
British government takes over administration of India, 1858
Commodore Perry opens Japanese ports to U.S. trade, 1854

Major Writers
You should be acquainted with the following writers

William Cullen Bryant
Edgar Allen Poe
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emily Dickinson
Henry David Thoreau
Herman Melville
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Walt Whitman