Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
2. How does progress/advancement of civilization mitigate against the
abundance of the land that supports the growing population? How does
the law of civilization assist or hinder American ‘rights’?
3. How, if at all, does Natty Bumpo seem a uniquely American character?
Consider the way he dresses, talks, and acts. Consider his attitude
towards the Judge.
4. How does Judge Templeton represent the values of civilization?
Why? What dangers are there in settling the land under Templeton’s
jurisdiction?
5. What is Natty Bumbo’s attitude towards Native American rights? And
the Judge’s? How do you know?
4.5 CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK
(1789–1867)
Catharine Maria Sedgwick was
born after the Revolutionary War into
a respected Massachusetts family. Her
father, Theodore Sedgwick, served in
the House of Representatives and in the
Massachusetts Supreme Court. Sedgwick
was educated at home and then at
Payne’s Finishing School, a boarding
school in Boston, and New York.
After her mother died and her father
remarried in 1813, Sedgwick lived with
her brothers, alternating between their
respective households in Boston and
Image 4.3 | Catharine Maria Sedgwick
New York. In 1821, she took the unusual Artist | W. Croome
Source | Wikimedia Commons
step of converting to Unitarianism. The
License | Public Domain
next year, she published her rst novel,
A New-England Tale. It established some constants in her writing: a New England
setting, interest in the benets of the Unitarian faith, and focus on domesticity.
In most of her works, Sedgwick considers women’s lives, both within and
outside of marriage. In Married or Single? (1857), she asked her readers not to
consider women as mere extensions of men or as vessels of civilization and virtue
best conned to the domestic realm. She also wrote of minority groups, including
Native Americans. Hope Leslie (1827) sympathetically depicts the religious and
social customs of Native Americans, a depiction based on her own research on the
Mohawks. She had a public life through her activities in various reform movements
tied to Unitarianism. She also had a public life as a very well-received writer.
Indeed, in a September 1846 notice of “The Literati of New York City,” Edgar Allan
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