Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T17:37:37.597Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Natural Law and National Science: The “Star of Empire” in Manifest Destiny and the American Observatory Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Craig Howard White
Get access

Extract

From its revolution based on Newtonian physics to its Star-Spangled Banner on the Moon, the United States of America shares with astronomy a worldview of infinite expansion. As above, so below: in space, myriad galaxies multiply the stars; on earth, cities of light interminably sprawl with people and production. This cosmology of growth, which first materialized in the scientific revolution and conquest of America during the European Renaissance, reemerges in the “American Renaissance” of the 1840s and 1850s when the American Observatory Movement and Manifest Destiny declare expansion a natural law for the heavens and North America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 20 , October 1995 , pp. 119 - 160
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Adams, Henry. The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma. New York: Macmillan, 1920.Google Scholar
Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. 1906; rept. New York: Modern Library, 1931.Google Scholar
Adams, John Quincy. “Ecce Iterum.” The Writings of John Quincy Adams. Ed. Ford, Worthington Chauncey. New York: Macmillan, 1914, vol. 3.Google Scholar
Adams, John Quincy. “First Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1825.” Great Issues in American History: From the Revolution to the Civil War, 1765–1865. Ed. Hofstadter, Richard. New York: Vintage, 1958.Google Scholar
Adams, John Quincy. An Oration, Delivered at Plymouth, December 22,1802: At the Anniversary Commemoration of the First Landing of Our Ancestors at that Place. Boston: Russell and Cutler, 1802.Google Scholar
Adams, John Quincy. An Oration Delivered Before the Cincinnati Astronomical Society. … Cincinnati: Shepard, 1843.Google Scholar
Anderson, Eric. “The Millerite Use of Prophecy: A Case Study of a ‘Striking Fulfilment.’” The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Numbers, Ronald L. and Butler, Jonathan M.. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987: 78–91.Google Scholar
Balmer, Randall. “Apocalypticism in America: The Argot of Premillennialism in Popular Culture.” Prospects: An Annual Journal of American Cultural Studies 13 (1988): 417–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Carl. The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas. 1922; rept. New York: Vintage, 1958.Google Scholar
Beecher, Catharine E.A Treatise on Domestic Economy. 3rd rev. ed.New York: Harper and Brothers, 1848.Google Scholar
Beecher, Lyman. Plea for the West. 1835; rept. New York: Arno, 1977.Google Scholar
Berkeley, George. “America, or the Muses's Prophecy” (1726). The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. Ed. Luce, A. A. and Jessop, T. E.. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1955, 7: 370.Google Scholar
Blount, Lois Foster. “A Brief Study of Thomas J. Rusk Based on His Letters to His Brother, David, 1835–1856.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 34 (01 1931): 181–202.Google Scholar
Boudinot, Elias. Star in the West; or, A Humble Attempt to Discover the Long Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, Preparatory to Their Return to Their Beloved City, Jerusalem. Trenton, N.J.: D. Fenton, S. Hutchinson, and J. Dunham, 1816.Google Scholar
Broad, William J. “Debris from Comet Forces New Delay of Shuttle Flight.” New York Times, 07 31, 1993: A10.Google Scholar
Bryant, Keith L. Jr., and Dethloff, Henry C.. A History of American Business. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983.Google Scholar
Buchanan, John. The Works of John Buchanan. Ed. Moore, John Bassett. New York, Antiquarian, 1960.Google Scholar
Bucke, Richard Maurice. Notes and Fragments: Left by Walt Whitman. 1899; rept. Folcroft Library Editions, 1972.Google Scholar
Burnham, John C.How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Carroll, Anna Ella. The Star of the West; or, National Men and National Measures. Boston: James French, 1856.Google Scholar
The Centenary of the Cincinnati Observatory. Cincinnati: Court Index Press, 1944.Google Scholar
Chambers, Ann B., ed. Our Flag. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989.Google Scholar
Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cincinnati: A Guide to the Queen City and Its Neighbors. Cincinnati: Weisen-Hart, 1943.Google Scholar
Cirlot, J. E.A Dictionary of Symbols. 2nd ed. Trans. Sage, Jack. 1971; rept. New York: Dorset, 1991.Google Scholar
Cist, Charles. Cincinnati in 1841: Its Early Annals and Future Prospects. Cincinnati, 1841.Google Scholar
Clark, Harry Hayden. “The Influence of Science on American Ideas, from 1775 to 1809.” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 35 (1944): 305–49.Google Scholar
“Contemporaneous Reactions to Statehood.” Florida Historical Quarterly 23 (04 1945): 202–11.Google Scholar
Davidson, Cathy N.Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
DeVoto, Bernard. The Year of Decision: 1846. Boston: Little, Brown, 1943.Google Scholar
Dick, Everett. “Falling of the Stars.” Dictionary of American History. Rev. ed. New York: Scribner's, 1976.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. “John Brown.” 1881; A John Brown Reader. Ed. Ruchames, Louis. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1959: 311–32.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. 1881; rept. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel, 1983.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave Ed. Baker, Houston A. Jr. 1845; rept. New York: Penguin, 1982.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. “The War with Mexico.” 1848; The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Ed. Foner, Philip S.. New York: International, 1950, 1: 291–96.Google Scholar
Dupree, A. Hunter. Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Eggenberger, David. Flags of the United States of America. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1964.Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “John Brown: Speech at Salem, January 6, 1860.” The Portable Emerson. Ed. Bode, Carl and Cowley, Malcolm. New York: Viking, 1946: 569–72.Google Scholar
Fliegelman, Jay. Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, and the Culture of Performance. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folk, Patrick Allen. “The Queen City of Mobs”: Riots and Community Reactions in Cincinnati, 1788–1848. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toledo, 1978.Google Scholar
Fuller, Margaret. “The Great Lawsuit” (1843). The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 3rd ed. Ed. Baym, Nina et al. New York: Norton, 1989, 1: 1515–31.Google Scholar
Gabriel, Ralph Henry. The Course of American Democratic Thought. 2nd ed.New York: Ronald, 1956.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gambrell, Herbert. Anson Jones: The Last President of Texas. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1948.Google Scholar
Graebner, Norman A., ed. Manifest Destiny. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968.Google Scholar
Greene, John C.American Science in the Age of Jefferson. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
Grierson, Francis. Abraham Lincoln: The Practical Mystic. New York: John Lane, 1918.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Schuyler. The History of the National Flag of the United States of America. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1853.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Thomas. Men and Manners in America. 1843; rept. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1973.Google Scholar
Harrison, Edward. Masks of the Universe. New York: Macmillan, 1985.Google Scholar
Harrison, Peleg. The Stars and Stripes and Other American Flags. Boston: Little, Brown, 1906.Google Scholar
Heineman, Helen. Mrs. Trollope: The Triumphant Feminine in the Nineteenth Century. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1979.Google Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Alred A. Knopf, 1964.Google Scholar
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. “Old Ironsides.” The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1892, 1: 2.Google Scholar
James, Henry. The American Scene (1907). Collected Travel Writings. Ed. Howard, Richard. New York: Library of America, 1993, 2: 351–676.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Ed. Washington, H. A.. New York: John C. Riker, 1854.Google Scholar
Kammen, Michael. A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture. New York: Vintage, 1987.Google Scholar
Keller, Evelyn Fox. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Kimmelman, Michael. “Thomas Cole, Early American Pessimist.” New York Times, 06 19, 1994: B5.Google Scholar
Kolodny, Annette. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Kovarik, Alois F. “Denison Olmsted.” Dictionary of American Biography. Ed. Malone, Dumas. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934: 121–22.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S.The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.Google Scholar
Langley, Samuel Pierpont. The New Astronomy. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1889.Google Scholar
Langsam, Walter Consuelo. Cincinnati in Color. New York: Hastings House, 1978.Google Scholar
Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Leyda, Jay, ed. The Melville Log: A Documentary Life of Herman Melville, 1819–91. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951.Google Scholar
Loomis, Elias. The Recent Progress of Astronomy; Especially in the United States. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1856.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manuel, Frank E.A Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.Google Scholar
Mastai, Boleslaw, and Mastai, Marie-Louise D'Otrang. The Stars and the Stripes: The American Flag as Art and as History from the Birth of the Republic to the Present. New York: Knopf, 1973.Google Scholar
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative). Ed. Hayford, Harrison and Sealts, Merton M. JrChicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melville, Herman. “The Portent (1859).” The Battle-Pieces of Herman Melville. Ed. Cohen, Hennig. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1963.Google Scholar
Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980.Google Scholar
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History. 1963; rept. New York: Vintage, 1966.Google Scholar
Milham, Willis I.Early American Observatories: Which Was the First Astronomical Observatory in America? Williamstown, Mass.: Williams College, 1938.Google Scholar
Mitchel, F. A.Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel: Astronomer and General – A Biographical Narrative. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1887.Google Scholar
Mitchel, O. M.The Planetary and Stellar Worlds: …A Series of Ten Lectures. New York: Baker and Scribner, 1848.Google Scholar
Moore, Patrick. The International Encyclopedia of Astronomy. New York: Orion, 1987.Google Scholar
Musto, David F. “A Survey of the American Observatory Movement, 1800–50.” Vistas in Astronomy 9 (1967): 87–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagel, Paul C.One Nation Indivisible: The Union in American Thought, 1776–1861. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Numbers, Ronald L.Creation by Natural Law: Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Numbers, and Numbers, Janet S.. “Millerism and Madness: A Study of ‘Religious Insanity’ in Nineteenth-Century America.” The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Numbers, Ronald L. and Butler, Jonathan M.. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987: 92–117.Google Scholar
Olmsted, Denison. Compendium of Astronomy. New York: Collins, Keese, 1839.Google Scholar
Olmsted, Denison. An Introduction to Astronomy, Designed as a Text Book for the Students of Yale College. New York: Robert B. Collins, 1856.Google Scholar
Olmsted, Denison. “Observations on the Meteors of November 13th, 1833.” American Journal of Science and Arts 25 (01/04 1834): 363–411.Google Scholar
Pareles, Jon. “Greatest Hits of the Civil War.” New York Times, 08, 11 1991: H25, H32.Google Scholar
Pendray, G. Edward. “How Telescopes Came to America – Her Historic Observatories.” Men, Mirrors, and Stars. Reprinted in I. Bernard Cohen, ed., Aspects of Astronomy in America in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Arno, 1980.Google Scholar
Pope-Hennessy, Una. Three English Women in America. 1929; rept. London: Century, 1987.Google Scholar
Pratt, Julius W. “The Origin of ‘Manifest Destiny.’” American Historical Review 31 (07 1927): 795–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preble, George Henry. Our Flag: Origin and Progress of the Flag of the United States of America. Albany, N.Y.: Joel Munsell, 1872.Google Scholar
The Presbyterian Hymnal. Louisville, Kent.: Westminster/John Knox, 1990.Google Scholar
Prescott, William H.History of the Conquest of Mexico. 1843; rept. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1856, vol. 1.Google Scholar
Quaife, Milo M., Weig, Melvin J., and Appleman, Roy E.. The History of the United States Flag. New York: Harper and Row, 1961.Google Scholar
Quarles, Benjamin. Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Rowe, David L. “Comets and Eclipses: The Millerites, Nature, and the Apocalypse.” Adventist Heritage: A Magazine of Adventist History (Winter 1976): 10–19.Google Scholar
Rufus, W. C. “Astronomical Observatories in the United States Prior to 1848.” Scientific Monthly 19 (08 1924): 120–39.Google Scholar
Scott, Jesup W. “The North American Plain.” De Bow's Review 26 (05 1859): 560–70.Google Scholar
Scott, Jesup W. “Westward the Star of Empire.” De Bow's Review 27 (08 1859): 125–36.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (1599). The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare. Ed. Neilson, W. A. and Hill, C. J.. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1970: 1014–42.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, Philip S. Stellar Impact: Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel and Astronomy in Antebellum America. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991.Google Scholar
“Shooting Stars and Meteoric Showers.” Harper's New Monthly Magazine 1 (06–11 1850): 439–48.Google Scholar
Slotkin, Richard. The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890. New York: Atheneum, 1985.Google Scholar
Smith, Henry Nash. Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth. New York: Random House, 1950.Google Scholar
Star of Emancipation. Boston: Massachusetts Female Emancipation Society, 1841.Google Scholar
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly. Ed. Kenneth S. Lynn. 1852; rept. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.Google Scholar
Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Ed. Torrey, Bradford and Allen, Francis H.. New York: Dover, 1962, vol. 2.Google Scholar
Thoreau, Henry David. “The Last Days of John Brown.” Reform Papers. Ed. Glick, Wendell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973: 145–53.Google Scholar
Thoreau, Henry David. “A Plea for Captain John Brown.” Reform Papers. Ed Glick, Wendell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973: 111–38.Google Scholar
Trollope, Frances. Domestic Manners of the Americans. Ed. Donald Smalley. 1832; rept. New York: Knopf, 1949.Google Scholar
Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893). The Frontier in American History. New York: H. Holt, 1920: 1–38.Google Scholar
Watson, James C.A Popular Treatise on Comets. Philadelphia: James Challen and Son, 1861.Google Scholar
Webster, Daniel. The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster. Boston: Little, Brown, 1903.Google Scholar
Weinberg, Albert K.Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History. 1935; rept. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1963.Google Scholar
Westfall, Richard S.The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.Google Scholar
Whipple, Edwin P. “Editor's Table: Providence in American History.” Harper's Review 17 (10 1858): 694–700.Google Scholar
Whitman, Walt. “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.” Leaves of Grass. Ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley. 1965; rept. New York: Norton, 1968: 327–33.Google Scholar
Whitman, Walt. “Year of Meteors (1859–60).” Leaves of Grass. Ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley. 1965; rept. New York: Norton, 1968: 237–38.Google Scholar
Wills, Garry. Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978.Google Scholar
Wood, Gordon S.The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1992.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A.Theatre of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.Google Scholar
Zochert, Donald. “Science and the Commonn Man in Ante-Bellum America.” Isis 65 (12 1974): 448–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar