American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860

In this agile study, historian Ayers (Southern Journey) profiles people in early- and mid-19th-century America whose “visions” (“imagined paths between things as they are and what they might become”) influenced the character and development of the new nation. The large cast of eccentrics, outsiders, and radicals includes Black Hawk, a leader of the Indigenous Sauk people who challenged the power of the U.S. government and penned an autobiography that revealed his scorn for the selfishness and acquisitiveness of Americans, and transcendentalist writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, who offered up “a strange but powerful critique” of their country that dismissed traditional politics and business in favor of a “democracy of spirit independent of any church or creed.” The most consequential visionaries, according to Ayers, were the abolitionists. By the 1850s, the North and South’s “incompatible social orders,” which had been revealed by these visionaries, including Frederick Douglass, led to increasingly violent conflicts between Americans, culminating in the Civil War. Ayers concludes that the war’s outcome proved the power of “a vision... in the face of disheartening history.” Ayers skillfully handles the huge cast of characters, drawing intriguing parallels between them. It’s an illuminating exploration of American political history. Illus. (Oct.)