5.1: Technology and Class Division
America changed dramatically during this time.
"While the majority of Americans seemed to embrace technology and its promise of progress and equality, many of the most famous writers of the era rejected technology on multiple grounds, even as they saw profound potential in either the inventive spirit behind new technologies, technology's ability to free the body for presumably higher pursuits, or the disciplined efficiency of mechanical works."
Read this introductory overview of antebellum American literature's relationship to technological development and industrialization during the era.
Orestes Brownson penned one of the most powerful critiques of capitalism in the antebellum United States, "Laboring Classes". Although Brownson was a leading transcendentalist, representing its more social-activist wing (as opposed, perhaps, to Emerson), in the years following the publication of this essay, he became increasingly conservative, renouncing his radical past and transcendentalism and converting to Catholicism. Read this essay and take notes on Brownson's ideas.