Common Traits Of Transcendentalism And Frontier

Two big cultural innovations that share common traits are Transcendentalism and Frontier. Transcendentalism was an important intellectual movement that inspired individual connection to the world and valued reason over understanding. Transcendentalism also encouraged literacy and personal rationality by urging people to think for themselves and the world around them. The Frontier was the American western expansion that created a sense of identity for the American people and rugged individualism. Such cultural innovations share many similarities as well as the divinity of God. Through transcendentalism, we see the studied perception of what is divine, and through the frontier, we can see what is said to be God’s will guiding the American westward expansion. One might think that these ideologies created divine humans that God guided to populate the west but George Caleb Bingham’s, “Daniel Boone Escorting a Band of Pioneers (circa 1851)” demonstrates a much more grim presence.

Such ideologies are exhibited in John L. O’Sullivan’s, “Annexation”, through his use of “manifest destiny” where he aims to justify the annexation of Texas. “Manifest Destiny” is the cultural belief that the American settlers were consecrated to settle the continent of North America. Due to the ideologies created by transcendentalism and the frontier, American settlers believed that if they had not settled the west they would be “hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent” (O’Sullivan). Although the transcendentalist and frontier beliefs aimed to be divine, Spain and the Native Americans saw the westward expansion as a horrific