This document discusses perspectives and visions of truth in antebellum America through an analysis of Emerson's Nature and Frederick Douglass' narrative. It explores how Americans had competing visions of reality, shaped by factors like religion, slavery, and perceptions of national destiny. While Emerson advocated discovering universal truths through isolated contemplation of nature, Americans were actively constructing competing truths, making objective perspective difficult. The document examines how slavery, abolitionism, anti-Catholicism, and manifest destiny influenced American perspectives and visions of the nation.

1. Madeleine Moore
American Studies Spring 2014
After reading Emerson’s Nature, Christopher Pearse Cranch published a caricature of the
transcendentalist writer, depicting him as a walking “transparent eye-ball,” roving the countryside.
This cartoon, drawn sometime between 1836 and 1846, provides an entry point into a discussion of
nineteenth century America, by bringing up words like “sight,” “perspective,” “light,” and their
inverse, “darkness,” and “blindness.” Using the word “sight” to examine disparate nineteenth
century sources, from slave narratives to anti-Catholic jingoes to popular art, reveals important
distinctions between groups, in terms of their field and depth of vision, and dissimilar vantage
points from which to look at the American physical and cultural landscape. An application of
transcendental, Emersonian ideas to Frederick Douglass’ narrative, to the intolerant rhetoric of the
Second Great Awakening, and to Hudson School depictions of Manifest Destiny reveals this great
problem of perspective in antebellum America, signified by competing visions of Truth, and
plagued by selective blindness.
Emerson teaches how vision and light, by illuminating Nature, help the individual discover a
common Truth, without which one holds only a superficial perception of reality. In the passage that
Cranch’s cartoon lampoons, Emerson writes, “Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the
blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball.
I am nothing. I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or
particle of God” (Baym 2012, 217). With this vivid language, he illustrates the core principle
behind his exploration of nature. In nature – the leaves, the grass, the rolling hillside – one can
discover Nature, that is, the one, absolute, mysterious Truth. In isolation, appreciating the organic
environment, one will come to see that there is no difference between a human being and his
creator. One will find not an individual doctrine, but a single, universal wellspring of goodness,
virtue, beauty, and morality. Once able to access this common, divine voice, he will understand, for
example, that slavery is wrong. Because most people only imitate, and do not seek Truth for
themselves, Emerson writes, “few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At

2. least they have very superficial seeing” (ibid, 216). Emerson’s remedy for such hollow faculties of
vision is simple. “If a man would be alone,” he writes, “let him look at the stars... every night come
out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile” (ibid, 215).
In Emerson’s chapter on Beauty, we encounter the elements of this path toward Truth that
prove dangerous in regard to nineteenth century America. The risk lies in what Emerson describes
as “the plastic power of the human eye,” plastic meaning “creative” (ibid, 219). Because we are
creative, and by the beauty of the natural world find ourselves moved, we may guide ourselves
toward the wrong conclusions, and discover a spirituality that is in fact antithetical to the Truth.
Emerson believes that this is impossible, if one’s isolated appreciation of nature is earnestly and
unpretentiously undertaken. In further elaboration, he writes, “The eye is the best of artists. By the
mutual action of its structure and of the laws of light, perspective is produced... And as the eye is
the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will
not make beautiful” (ibid, 219). In the antebellum context, this foul object is slavery, and the peril
of the passage becomes apparent; a possible religious justification for bondage and oppression.
Emerson intends to celebrate the human capacity for poetry and divine inspiration, but this clarity of
vision is muddied by how easily and often it could be mistaken. We see this problem play out in
Frederick Douglass’ writing, especially in his encounters with evangelical slaveholders, whose
perceptions of Truth and reality are all the more righteous, having been formulated independently.
In his Narrative, Douglass tells a very transcendental, Emersonian journey of self-education
and religious discovery, but in speeches like The Fourth of July, he also elaborates on the
consequences of blindness in America, and the dangerous possibility of discovering an artificial
source of light. On his journey from a slave to a free, educated, abolitionist agitator, Douglass
discovers both spiritual Truth and intellectual truth. He comes to a religious awakening in an
independent, isolated dialogue with both natural and artificial beauty, utilizing what Margaret Fuller
would praise as “the powers of observation and manly heart of the writer” (Baym 2012, 779). He
recalls afternoons spent as an adolescent, sitting under a tree and watching ships sail by on the
Chesapeake Bay, writing, “Those beautiful vessels, robed in purest white, so delightful to the eye of
freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify and torment me with thoughts of my

3. wretched condition... The sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel
utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour out my soul’s complaint”
(Smith 1995, 38). This divine visual experience, though painful, is the transcendent moment at
which he realizes his faith in God, and his deep desire to be free. Douglass’ Truth here aligns with
what Emerson would describe as Truth, and he found it without imitation, using only his own two
eyes.
The second truth Douglass discovers is a more tangible, intellectual one, as he slowly
teaches himself to read, and therefore, to understand his position in the world. Although education
proves to be a technology of power, for him at first it is an instrument of torture, because it teaches
him the agonizing hypocrisy of America. It is this truth that will “forever unfit him to be a slave”
(ibid, 20). He becomes literate using a copy of the book that all American schoolboys own, The
Columbian Orator, which presents the basic philosophy on which America was founded. As he
begins to understand the enlightenment ideas of democracy and equality, he writes, “the light broke
in upon me by degrees,” slowly illuminating his exemption from them (ibid, 24). He describes how
he “writhed” under this light, feeling “unutterable anguish,” as his education opened his eyes to “the
horrible pit, but no ladder upon which to get out” (ibid, 24). Because of the Columbian Orator, he
could no longer be blind to the great paradox of American life, and the dreadful irony of his
existence.
With speeches like The Fourth of July, Douglass points out this blindness, and uses light as
a metaphor for republican ideals. He insists, “The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has
brought stripes and death to me” (“What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July”). Because white
America has felt its benevolent warmth, they feel the need to celebrate the nation. Douglass raises
the question of whether the idea of a divinely ordained nation is really Truth, or instead a false
conclusion. To Douglass, American holidays are the gravest insult to the slave population, because
celebrating the nation endorses its peculiar institution. He declares, “the character and conduct of
this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July!” (“What to the Slave is the Fourth of
July”). Even though his audience, a northern ladies’ abolition group, supports his cause, the
accusatory speech demonstrates how their patriotism undercuts their movement, and makes them

4. complicit in the evil of slavery. This concept finds unintended symbolism in Douglass’ benefactor,
the man who helps him escape from slavery, the blind Mr. Ruggles. His blindness provides irony,
showing that while physically blind, he is morally much more enlightened than many of his
countrymen. On the other hand, it also represents the fact that although acting with the best
intentions, he may be a northern reformer who cannot fully “see” the extent to which the institution
of slavery stains his identity as an American citizen.
While figures like Mr. Ruggles demonstrate the way in which newly awakened religious
zeal of the early nineteenth century led to reforming and abolitionist vigor, Mr. Covey and other
evangelical slaveholders from Douglass’ narrative reveal how “finding the light” could also place
spiritual and ethnic differences into sharper relief. This light that many people found had little to do
with rationality, or enlightenment ideas. Instead, the conversion experience at camp meetings
appealed to one’s emotions, promising that one could have a very personal, sensory communion
with God. Now, one could play a role in his own salvation. The entrance of God into one’s life
created unavoidable contradictions, especially for the slaveholding population, who grappled with
the question of baptizing their slaves. For Mr. Covey, one of Douglass’ masters, religion only
hardened him against his slaves, thin scriptural references to slavery endorsing his “nigger-breaking”
mission. For others, this process was more difficult. Asked one southern slaveholder, “If
any of my slaves go to heaven... must I see them there?” (Butler 2000, 109). Not all could look as
unflinchingly as Covey into the realities of slavery. This is very similar to the religious dilemmas of
some Native American tribes in the previous century, as European influences on their culture
created contradictions; once having revered animal life, they began to join in the fur trade.
According to John Butler, “the MicMacs tore out the eyes of beavers and other animals they killed
as a way of blinding the animals to the treatment the animals were now receiving” (Butler 2000,
106) This removal of eyes is reminiscent of the push not to baptize or educate slaves, and of the
process Douglass accuses many Americans of performing on themselves. Seconding this theory in
her review of his narrative, Margaret Fuller wrote, “The inconsistencies of Slaveholding professors
of religion cry to Heaven.... Their blindness is but one form of that prevalent fallacy which
substitutes a creed for a faith, a ritual for a life” (Baym 2012, 779).

5. As newly religious populations averted their eyes from slavery, they fervently refused to be
blind to threatening religious minorities, like Catholics and Mormons, who meddled with America’s
Manifest Destiny. The Orange riots of New York, and other violent episodes in urban centers across
the country, displayed that for many, the fight against heretical elements in the United States was as
imperative as faithful worship. The future of the nation they celebrated was dependent on its
spiritual health. Therefore, subversive Catholics not only endangered the souls of their neighbors,
but put the entire destiny of America at risk. In very biblical language, Douglass had referred to Mr.
Covey as a sly snake. So too did Protestant America view the “popish” Catholics. The song Wide
Awake Yankee Doodle explicitly warns against failing to see this slithering menace. It insists that
the country must crush the snake of Catholicism, for it “has almost charmed your eyes, to such
imprudent blindness” (Butler 2000, 65). The importance of this project can be understood with
paintings from the Hudson School, which provide a vivid description of the fate that awaits
America, should it stay the proper course. The Oxbow, for example, reveals the pastoral vision for
man’s cultivation of the American wilderness in the right side of the painting, with light from
heaven streaming down to endorse his efforts. In the left, dark clouds shroud an untamed
wilderness, serving as a warning, but also as a challenge. In order to fulfill God’s plan, the brave
American man must venture into the wilderness and conquer it. So too he must conquer and convert
the Catholic, the Mormon, and the heathanistic Native American. Similarly, against the backdrop of
enormous ships, with billowing white sails not unlike those that moved Frederick Douglass, the
small man rowing a boat in the painting Salem Harbor confirms the insignificance of man in
comparison to the grand, awe-inspiring mission of civilization.
These paintings confirm the enormous difficulty of Emerson’s project of “sight” in
antebellum America. Because of such tensions between American identities, Protestant and
Catholic, slave and free man, abolitionist woman and evangelical man, it was almost impossible to
transform oneself into a walking eyeball, capable of viewing America with clarity. These polarized
vantage points shed light on the culture that Emerson was reacting to, in which an independent,
non-imitative, and naturally discovered opinion was rare. Emerson understood that no two
Americans could look at something and see it the same way, whether that be the institution of

6. slavery, the Hudson River Valley, or the Fourth of July. He perhaps naively believed that given
isolated contemplation, away from society, the two would arrive at the same, common Truth.
Americans were not merely holding competing visions of reality, they were energetically building
upon them; actively constructing and mythologizing their own Truths. The Oxbow shows that what
Americans thought of as nature, wilderness, and civilization were not facts, but choices, and helps
illuminate how the debate over the nature of the nation, its divine purpose, and the spiritual
significance of its past and future could be so hotly contested, and eventually, so violently fought
over in the Civil War.
Baym, Nina. 2012. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Eighth Edition. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company Inc.
Butler, John, and Wacker, Grant, and Balmer, Randall. 2000. Religion in American Life: A Short
History. New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, Philip. 1995. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Toronto: Dover Publications, Inc.
TeachingAmericanHistory.org. 2006. “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July.” Accessed February,
2014.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july/