The Novel in American Romanticism
One big difference between American Romanticism and the Romanticism that developed on the other side of the pond (in Britain) is that the novel was kind of a big deal in American Romanticism. In British Romanticism, it wasn't.
The most important British Romantic writers were poets—like William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Byron.
And while the Americans also have their big poets, like Walt Whitman, a number of the most important American Romantic writers were novelists, most notably Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. So one thing that distinguishes American Romanticism from British Romanticism is how important the novel became in the American Romantic movement.
Chew On This
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is one of the most important novels to come out of American Romanticism. Check out the book's many themes—ranging from fate and free will to man and the natural world.
Man's relationship to the natural world is also a big theme in Melville's epic novel Moby-Dick.