1. Baldwin, J. G., Party Leaders: Sketches of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John Randolph of Roanoke (1855; rept. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1861), p. 348.Google Scholar

2. An example of this misunderstanding appears in an article by Helen Weinberg, “An American Grail: An Iconographic Study of Cole, Thomas's ‘Titan's Goblet,’” [Prospects 8: 261–280, (1983)]Google Scholar, in which the author interprets the painting as an expression of the national values embodied in Andrew Jackson. See especially pp. 275 and 278, where Weinberg writes of Cole's “typically Jacksonian faith in American progress.” Cole, as I demonstrate below, was no admirer of Jackson, and Weinberg's assumption, contrary to the evidence, that he embraced Jacksonian attitudes produces larger errors of interpretation.

For other treatments of Cole of most relevance to this argument, see LaBudde, Kenneth, “The Mind of Thomas Cole” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1954)Google Scholar; Merritt, Howard, ed., Studies on Thomas Cole: An American Romanticist (Baltimore Museum of Art Annual II, 1967)Google Scholar; Parry, Ellwood, “The Course of Empire': A Study in Serial Imagery” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1970)Google Scholar, and his book, The Art of Thomas Cole: Ambition and Imagination (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Wallach, Alan, “The Ideal American Artist and the Dissenting Tradition: A Study of Thomas Cole's Popular Reputation” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1973)Google Scholar; and “Thomas Cole and the Aristocracy,” Arts Magazine 56, no. 3 (11 1981): 94–106Google Scholar. With the exception of Wallach's work, these studies neglect Cole's involvement in the social, political, and historical context that pressed so hard upon him in the 1830s, and from which he increasingly withdrew in the 1840s. Matthew Baigell and Kaufman, Allen, in “Thomas Cole's ‘The Oxbow’: A Critique of American Civilization,” Arts Magazine 55, no. 5 (01 1981): 136–39Google Scholar, also touch upon Cole's anti-Jacksonian sentiments.

3. New studies more sensitive to this dimension of landscape include Stein, Roger, Susquehanna: Images of the Settled Landscape (Binghamton, N.Y.: Roberson Center for the Arts and Sciences, 1981)Google Scholar; Kelly, Franklin, Frederic Edwin Church and the National Landscape (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and a study currently undertaken by Alan Wallach on Cole's patrons. This turning of the scholarly tide is already well under way in the field of British landscape studies. See Barrell, John, The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place, 1730–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; and Barrell, , The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Landscape, 1730–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Rosenthal, Michael, British Landscape Painting (Oxford: Phaidon, 1982)Google Scholar; Solkin, David, Richard Wilson: The Landscape of Reaction (London: Tate Gallery, 1982)Google Scholar; and Bermingham, Ann, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740–1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).Google Scholar

4. On Cole's early years, see Noble, Louis's highly colored biography, The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, ed. Vesell, Elliott (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wallach, , “The Ideal Artist and the Dissenting Tradition.”Google Scholar

5. Cole's various formulations for his series are reproduced in Parry, , “‘The Course of Empire,’” pp. 183–89Google Scholar. See also Merritt, Howard, Studies on Thomas Cole, pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

6. On Reed, see Craven, Wayne, “Luman Reed, Patron: His Collection and Gallery,” American Art Journal 12, no. 2 (Spring 1980): 40–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reed assumed the commission for the series from Robert Gilmor, for whom Cole painted A Wild Scene in 1831–1832Google Scholar, a work closely related to The Savage State which opens The Course of Empire.

7. A profound distrust of the passions involved in the growth of party and faction was an important element of Whig thought. See Howe, Daniel Walker, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), ch. 3, esp. pp. 52–53.Google Scholar

8. Cole's comment on Harrison's death appears in a letter to Adams, William, dated 04 8, 1841Google Scholar, cited by Wallach, , “Cole and the Aristocracy,” p. 98.Google Scholar

9. Archives of American Art, Reel no. ALC1. For more on Cole's anti-Jacksonian sentiments, see p. 76 and n. 35 below.

10. On Jackson's fiscal policies and the Whig response, see Howe, , The Political Culture of American Whigs, p. 139.Google Scholar

11. Cited in Miller, Douglas, The Birth of Modern America, 1820–1850 (New York: Pegasus, 1970), p. 67.Google Scholar

12. On the Depression of 1837, see Rezneck, Samuel, “The Social History of an American Depression, 1837–1843,” American Historical Review 40, no. 4 (07 1935): 662–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Charvat, William, “American Romanticism and the Depression of 1837,” Science and Society 2, no. 1 (Winter 1937): 67–82Google Scholar. Numerous references to the effect of the Depression appear in The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851, ed. Nevins, Allan (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1936)Google Scholar, for the years 1836 and 1837. Perhaps the most searing contemporary response to the Depression was a discourse delivered in Boston by Orestes Brownson on Sunday, May 28, 1837, “Babylon is Falling: A Discourse preached in the Masonic Temple, to the Society for Christian Union and Progress.…” Unlike most of his contemporaries, Brownson analyses the Depression along class rather than partisan lines.

13. See Miller, Douglas, Jacksonian Aristocracy: Class and Democracy in New York, 1830–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 78–79, 80.Google Scholar

14. The Diary of Philip Hone, 05 8, 1837, pp. 255, 281.Google Scholar

15. A good fictional example of this conflation appears in Cooper, James Fenimore's novel Home as Found (1838)Google Scholar. Chapter 7 contains a description of a fire that sweeps through the warehouse district of Manhattan and provides a graphic physical analogue to the financial panic of 1837, one year before Cooper published his novel.

16. Paulson, Ronald, Representations of Revolution, 1789–1820 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 75.Google Scholar

17. A related example of the image is Channing, William Ellery, “On the Life and Character of Napoleon Bonaparte,” in Works of William Ellery Channing (Boston 1847), vol. 1, p. 106Google Scholar. Lincoln spoke of political corruption as a “lava” belching forth from Washington. Quoted in Nagel, Paul, This Sacred Trust: American Nationality, 1798–1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 94.Google Scholar

18. Cole did a number of studies for a never-executed mural commission on the theme of commerce: “Commerce Rising, Commerce Reigning, and Commerce Sleeping.” These studies may be associated with the commission that he received from one H. Bayless for a cycle to decorate a Merchant's Exchange (Philadelphia?), which included the following brief descriptions: “1st Commerce clothing the naked Savage and introducing agricultural implements … / 2nd Commerce Introducing Literature / 3rd Commerce Staying War / 4th Commerce Leading the [text illegible at this point] to the Temple of Peace” (Archives of American Art, Reels ALC3 and ALC4). Cole's feelings about commerce were summed up in a journal entry dated August 1,1836: “If men were not blind and insensible to the beauty of nature the great works necessary for the purpose of commerce might be carried on without destroying it, and at times might even contribute to her charms by rendering her more accessible - but it is not so they desecrate whatever they touch.” Cited by LaBudde, Kenneth, “The Mind of Thomas Cole,” p. 143Google Scholar. For further analysis of Cole's attitudes toward commerce, see Miller, Angela, “‘The Imperial Republic’: Narratives of National Expansion in American Art, 1820 to 1860” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1985), pp. 114–18.Google Scholar

19. Alan Wallach has previously noted the possible allusion to Jackson in the figure of the emperor, “Thomas Cole and the Aristocracy,” p. 99, 20Google Scholar. See Miles, Edwin A., “The Whig Party and the Menace of Caesar,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 27, no. 4 (Winter 1968): 361–79.Google Scholar

21. See, for instance, Hone, 's Diary, 12 7, 1838, p. 367Google Scholar. The Federalistturned-Whig John Quincy Adams saw himself in the role of Cicero, and, in the words of Howe, Daniel Walker, “projected the dangers to the state embodied in Cicero's adversary Caesar, upon his own rival, [Jackson],” The Political Culture of American Whigs, p. 44Google Scholar. Howe further discusses the image of Caesar for American Whigs on p. 79.

22. Schlesinger, Arthur Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1945), p. 38.Google Scholar

23. For a survey of these images, see Weitenkampf, Frank, American Graphic Art (New York: MacMillan, 1924), pp. 216–17Google Scholar; Murrell, William, A History of American Graphic Humor, 1747–1865 (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933), vol. 1, pp. 106–24Google Scholar and passim; Hess, Stephen and Kaplan, Milton, The Ungentlemanly Art: A History of American Political Cartoons (New York: MacMillan, 1968), pp. 66–71Google Scholar; and Davison, Nancy R., “Andrew Jackson in Cartoon and Caricature,” in American Printmaking Before 1876; Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy (Washington: Library of Congress, 1975), pp. 20–24Google Scholar. See also Sullivan, John, “Jackson Caricatured: Two Historical Errors,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 31, no. 1 (Spring, 1972): 39–44Google Scholar, on two caricatures of Jackson by David Claypoole Johnson.

24. See Miller, Perry, The Raven and the Whale: The War of Words and Wits in the Era of Poe and Melville (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1956), p. 189Google Scholar. Perhaps the most sustained attack on the character of Napoleon and his threat to republican values was Channing's previously cited essay “On the Life and Character of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

25. Davison describes a variant cartoon entitled Set-to Between the Champion Old Tip and the Swell Dutchman of Kinderhook (“Andrew Jackson in Caricature and Cartoon,” p. 23)Google Scholar. She also comments that the figure of Jackson supporting Van Buren in games of cards and pool appeared in later cartoons, and points out that Jackson was “compared to Napoleon, both favorably and unfavorably” in contemporary caricature (p. 23).

26. See Miles, , “The Whig Party and the Menace of Caesar,” pp. 373–76.Google Scholar

27. See, for instance, Born to Command: King Andrew the First, which shows Jackson as an emperor holding a scroll inscribed “Veto” and standing upon the tattered remains of the Constitution and a coat of arms inscribed “Internal Improvements” (Kaplan, and Hess, , The Ungentlemanly Art,” p. 68)Google Scholar. The imperial image was transmitted to Van Buren as well, as in Granny Harrison Delivering the Country of the Executive Federalist (1840)Google Scholar, showing Van Buren as a king being forcibly pulled from his throne by the next president. Reproduced in The Image of America in Caricature and Cartoon (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1975), p. 68.Google Scholar

28. This lithograph was the work of one “Hassan Straightshanks,” and is listed as no. 115 in Murrell, , A History of American Graphic Humor, p. 125.Google Scholar

29. Parton, , Caricature and Other Comic ArtsGoogle Scholar, as quoted in Murrell, , A History of American Graphic Humor, p. 124.Google Scholar

30. There was undoubtedly some overlap in the audiences for these two works, so similar in theme yet so different in perspective.

31. New-York Commercial Advertiser, 02 13, 1836, p. 3Google Scholar. This event was mentioned but incorrectly cited in Parry, , “The Course of Empire,” p. 135Google Scholar. I am indebted to Mariam Touba of the New-York Historical Society for tracing this reference. The vogue for “periphrastick dioramas” is noted in The New-York Mirror 13 (07 25, 1835): 31Google Scholar, and again on August 29, 1835, p. 71. Subjects included views of India and Italy, the conflagration of Moscow, and scenes from “scripture history,” the latter perhaps referring to Hannington's diorama of the Biblical Deluge.

32. “Progress of the Great West in Population, Agriculture, Arts and Commerce,” De Bow's Commercial Review of the South and West 4, no. 1 (09 1847): 31Google Scholar. Another instance of such imagery is Winthrop, Robert, “Address,” 1839, in New England Society Orations, ed. Brainerd, Cephas, 2 vols. (New York: Century Society, 1901), vol. 1, p. 257Google Scholar: “Freedom and Slavery, in one and the same year, have landed on these American shores. And American Liberty, like the Victor of ancient Rome, is doomed, let us hope not forever, to endure the presence of a fettered captive as a companion in her Car of Triumph.”

33. “Democracy,” in Ryan, Alvan S., ed., The Brownson Reader (New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1955), p. 39.Google Scholar

34. The mob rule that seemed, from the Whig viewpoint, an inevitable accompaniment of Jackson's style of leadership is the subject of another cartoon of 1834, The People putting Responsibility to the test or the downfall of the Kitchen Cabinet and Collar Presses (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division), which depicts a mob of angry partisans pulling down the Constitution presided over by an allegorical representation of the Supreme Court. In the background, Jackson flees the chaos that he has precipitated.

35. This reference appears in Cole's journal (Archives, Reel ALC3). The passage reappears in Noble, /Vesell, , The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, p. 140Google Scholar, with a typical omission: “[W]e heard the shouts of a company of men, rejoicing at the defeat of their political enemies.”

36. Hone, , Diary, 08 11, 1835, p. 169Google Scholar. See also the sarcastic story Hone tells that illustrates for him the uncritical support the public gave to Jackson, (05 20, 1834), p. 128.Google Scholar

37. Hone, , Diary, 05 4, 1837, p. 244.Google Scholar

38. Diary, 12 7, 1838, p. 367Google Scholar. See also June, 1834, p. 131.

39. Autobiography; cited by Jaffe, Irma, John Trumbull: Patriot Artist of the American Revolution (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975), p. 146.Google Scholar

40. Diary, p. 451Google Scholar; p. 450. See also December 2, 1839, p. 434, on the breakdown of civic order.

41. For one such meditation, see Diary, 07 4, 1837, p. 267.Google Scholar

42. The entry is dated August 21, 1835. I am indebted to Kenneth J. LaBudde for his transcription of this passage from Cole's journals (personal correspondence). Cole's gloomy forebodings were shared by numerous foreign visitors. See Pierson, George, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), pp. 775–76Google Scholar. In his account of a visit to the United States in 1832, Godfrey Thomas Vigne predicted that in less than half a century the American republic “will fall to pieces by its own weight,” cited in Mesick, Jane Louise, The English Traveller in America, 1785–1835 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1922), p. 332Google Scholar. See also Marryat, Captain Frederick, Diary in America, ed. Zanger, Jules (1839; rept. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), pp. 43–44Google Scholar: “… it is the country, and not the government, which has been productive of such rapid strides as have been made by America. Indeed, it is a query whether the form of government would have existed down to this day, had it not been for the advantages derived from the vast extent and boundless resources of the territory in which it was established.” Debate over the impact of continued expansion on the health and stability of the republic was intense during the 1830s; for more on this, see Miller, Angela, “‘The Imperial Republic’Google Scholar; on earlier discussions of the subject, see Lawson-Peebles, Robert, Landscape and Written Expression in Revolutionary America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 135–64.Google Scholar

43. On this relationship, see Wallach, , “Cole and the Aristocracy.”Google Scholar

44. Hall, Francis, Travels in Canada, and the United States, in 1816 and 1817 (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1818), p. 35.Google Scholar

45. See Wallach, , “Cole and the Aristocracy,”Google Scholar for a discussion of the impact of such political changes on Cole and his New York patrons.

46. On the anti-rent movement, see Miller, Douglas, Jacksonian Aristocracy, pp. 62–69Google Scholar; History of the State of New York, 10 vols., ed. Flick, Alexander C. (New York State Historical Association, 1934), vol. 6, pp. 283–321Google Scholar; and Fox, Dixon Ryan, The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, 1801–1840, ed. Rimini, Robert (1919; rept. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965), pp. 437–38.Google Scholar

47. Cole, 's 1832 Interior of the Coliseum, Rome (Albany Institute of History and Art)Google Scholar is an instance of his fascination with the building.

48. Noble-Vesell, , The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, pp. 115–16.Google Scholar

49. “A Sermon Delivered before the Boston Fraternity of Churches, April 2, 1846” (Boston, 1846), p. 7Google Scholar, quoted in Somkin, Fred, Unquiet Eagle: Memory and Desire in the Idea of American Freedom (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 39Google Scholar. The use of the volcano as an image of human passion had a long history in the European emblem tradition. Francis Quarles, a source that Cole may have known from his English childhood, employed the image in Emblems, Divine and Moral (1635; rept. London: John Bennet, 1839) book 5, no. 2, p. 267Google Scholar: “O bring me apples to assuage that fire, which, Aetna-like, inflames my flaming breast.…”

50. “The Coliseum,” by T. C. Brooks, after Richter, Jean Paul, The Diadem (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 91Google Scholar. The writer also played upon the liminal quality of the Colosseum, describing it as a product of both man and nature, a “mountain, full of fragments of rock” whose walls were “cliffs.”

51. See, for instance, “Rome in Midsummer,” in Outre-Mer, Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1886–1891), vol. 7, pp. 251–54Google Scholar; and Cooper, James Fenimore, Gleanings in Europe: Italy, ed. Denne, Constance A. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), pp. 216–17Google Scholar. Other instances of fascination with the Colosseum include Taylor, Bayard, “The Voices of Rome,” in Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1883), p. 203Google Scholar; William Wetmore Story, Roba di Roma (London: Chapman and Hall, 1864), pp. 176–79Google Scholar; and Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Coliseum,” in Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), pp. 748–49Google Scholar. There were pictorial equivalents to such sentiments, as for instance Tilton, John Sargeant Rollin (attrib.), The Roman Colosseum at SunsetGoogle Scholar. Jasper Cropsey also painted the Colosseum around 1848 during his stay in Italy. See Coffey, John W., The Twilight of Arcadia: American Landscape Painters in Rome, 1830–1880 (Brunswick, Me.: Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 1987).Google Scholar

52. “Rome in Midsummer,” p. 253.Google Scholar

53. Canto 4, stanzas 138–145 of Childe Harold, and Scene 4 from Manfred, in which Byron evokes the usual contrast between the past violence of the empire and the desolation of the present, are especially relevant. Baker, Paul, in The Fortunate Pilgrims: Americans in Italy, 1800–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 28Google Scholar, discusses the tremendous impact that Byron had in shaping the responses of American travelers to Roman antiquities. See Wallach, Alan, “Cole, Byron, and ‘The Course of Empire’,” Art Bulletin 50 (12 1968): 375–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Byron's influence persisted into the late 19th Century; Winterbourne in Henry James's 1877 novella Daisy Miller instinctively recalls the verses from Manfred while musing upon the moonlit Colosseum. For a different analysis of the 19th-century meanings of the Colosseum, see Dinnerstein, Lois, “The Significance of the Colosseum in the First Century of American Art,” Arts Magazine 58, no. 10 (06 1984): 116–20.Google Scholar

54. Higham, John, “From Boundlessness to Consolidation: The Transformation of American Culture, 1848–1860” (Ann Arbor: William L. Clements Library, 1969)Google Scholar, points out the change in the American attitude toward revolution in Europe, especially that of 1848: “No longer associated primarily with the overthrow of aristocracy, after 1848 it came to signify the threat of socialism” (pp. 16–17). Fear of popular unrest extended across the political spectrum. The Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, Caleb Cushing, defended the preemption rights of Western settlers by arguing that emigration to the West would “relieve us of all the uneasy and exuberant spirit, which is compressed and fretted in populous communities, but which finds ample scope for the beneficial expansion of its energies in the wide West” (Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, on the Bill Granting Pre-Emption Rights to Settlers on the Public Lands,” delivered to the House of Representatives on June 13, 1838).

55. On Mummers' parades, see Davis, Susan, “‘Making Night Hideous’: Christmas Revelry and Public Order in Nineteenth Century Philadelphia,” American Quarterly 34, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 185–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For similar references to the threat of mob violence, see “The Wants of the Age,” Godey's Lady's Book 14 (04 1837): 164–65Google Scholar; and Chevalier, Michel, Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States, ed. Ward, John William (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961), pp. 376–79, 391Google Scholar, on the “reign of terror” in American cities such as Baltimore, accompanied by a perceived decline of civic virtue.

56. Willis, Nathaniel Parker, Rural Letters (New York: Baker and Scribner, 1849), pp. 126–27Google Scholar. The same passage first appeared in Willis's American Scenery in 1840 and is quoted in Stein, , Susquehanna, p. 47Google Scholar. Another of many examples of such thinking is an article on the dangers of public insurrection, “Thoughts on the Times,” The Knickerbocker 9, no. 5 (05 1837): 488–93.Google Scholar

57. Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, 5 vols., ed. Beard, James Franklin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960–1964), vol. 5, p. 388.Google Scholar

58. Cooper's political allegiances vacillated in the 1840s. A supporter of Jackson in the 1830s, he remained caught between his disgust with American Whigs, a “self-constituted aristocracy” serving commercial interests, and his uneasiness with demogoguery playing on popular passions, according to Schlesinger, , The Age of Jackson, p. 379Google Scholar. The anti-rent militancy of the 1840s turned Cooper, whose family had long held land in upstate New York, against the leveling force of democratic ideas. By the 1840s Cooper's social vision of America closely approximated Cole's in the 1830s.

59. The letter, in the Archives of American Art, Reel ALC1, is dated March 6, 1836, and is partially quoted by Noble, , The Life and Works of Thomas Cole, p. 160.Google Scholar

60. Somkin, , Unquiet Eagle, p. 66Google Scholar, has aptly named this strategy of admitting the evidence of history, then ignoring its implications for America, the “confession and avoidance syndrome.”

61. “Remarks,” in the Catalogue of the Exhibition of the New York Gallery of the Fine Arts, p. 5Google Scholar (Archives of American Art, Reel D6), frame 867.

62. Cooper's criticism may also reflect the general turn away from allegory that affected Cole's reputation beginning in the early 1850s.

63. Several essays and studies have commented on the affinities between Cole's and Cooper's vision of the American future: Gelpi, Albert, “White Light in the Wilderness,” in American Light: The Luminist Movement, ed. Wilmerding, John (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1980), p. 295Google Scholar; Bush, Clive, The Dream of Reason (New York: St. Martin's 1978), pp. 332–33Google Scholar; Powell, Earl, “The English Influences in Thomas Cole's Work” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1974), p. 76Google Scholar; and Peck, H. Daniel, A World by Itself: The Pastoral Moment in Cooper's Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 155–59.Google Scholar

64. A possible source for Cooper's tale is a description of the sudden formation and subsequent disappearance of a small volcanic island off the coast of Sicily in 1831, which, prior to its equally sudden disappearance, provoked conflicting settlement claims among rival European powers. See “Editor's Table,” The Knickerbocker 23, no. 3 (03 1844): 294–95.Google Scholar

65. Cooper, , The Crater, or Volcan's Peak, ed. Philbrick, Thomas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66. Cited by Miller, Perry, “The Romantic Dilemma in American Nationalism and the Concept of Nature,” in Nature's Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67. See Miller, Douglas, The Birth of Modern AmericaGoogle Scholar, on modernization's impact on the generation before the Civil War; Miller, , Jacksonian AristocracyGoogle Scholar; and Brown, Richard D., Modernization: The Transformation of American Life, 1600–1865 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976).Google Scholar

68. From the French historian of Europe M. F. Guizot, he gained another perspective on the internal sources of republican instability (list of books in Cole's library, Archives, Reel ALC3).

69. “Sonnet no. 45,” in Tymn, Marshall, Thomas Cole's Poetry (York, Penn.: Liberty Cap Press, 1972), p. 99.Google Scholar

70. Archives, Reel ALC3.

71. In an added irony, it resembles as well Cole's own glowing image of settlement in the final section of his “Essay on American Scenery,” American Monthly Magazine n.s. 1 (01 1836): 1–12Google Scholar. Reprinted in McCoubrey, John W., American Art: Sources and Documents, 1700–1960 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, c. 1965), pp. 98–109.Google Scholar

72. “Verdura, or A Tale of after Time.” I am indebted to Kenneth LaBudde for his transcription of “Verdura.” The passage is discussed in LaBudde, , “The Mind of Thomas Cole,” pp. 146–58Google Scholar. See also Wallach, , “The Ideal American Artist and the Dissenting Tradition.”Google Scholar I have left the punctuation as it appears in the manuscript. LaBudde places “Verdura” somewhere in the early 1840s, Wallach, c. 1845. Its resemblance in tone to The Course of Empire and to the journal entry of August 20, 1835 (quoted above), with which it bears comparison, suggests a slightly earlier date.

73. Adams, Douglas, in his essay “Environmental Concern and Ironic Views of American Expansionism Portrayed in Thomas Cole's Religious Paintings,” in Cry of the Environment: Rebuilding the Christian Creation Tradition, ed. Joranson, Philip N. and Butigan, Ken (Santa Fe: Bear and Co., 1984), pp. 296–305Google Scholar, bases his evidence for Cole's ambivalence about expansion on The Voyage of Life as well as The Course of Empire. For another reading of Cole's later series, see Kasson, Joy, “‘The Voyage of Life’: Thomas Cole and Romantic Disillusionment,” American Quarterly 27, no. 1 (03 1975): 42–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74. Cole harbored this feeling despite the fact that he enjoyed some of the most generous patronage given to any American artist during the first half of the century. See LaBudde, , “The Mind of Thomas Cole,” p. 159Google Scholar; and Wallach, , “The Ideal American Artist and the Dissenting Tradition,” pp. 141–45.Google Scholar

75. See Delmage, Rutherford E., “The American Idea of Progress, 1750–1850,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 91, no. 4 (10 1947): 307–14Google Scholar; Nisbet, Robert, History of the Idea of Progress (New York: Basic Books, 1980)Google Scholar; and Ekirch, Arthur, The Idea of Progress in America, 1815–1860 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).Google Scholar

76. Kelly, , Frederic Church and the National LandscapeGoogle Scholar, examines how Cole's student Church transformed The Pastoral State and Desolation in his own landscape work during the 1850s. The subject of landscape allegories in the 1850s is examined further by Miller, , “‘The Imperial Republic’,” pp. 192–264.Google Scholar