The American Revolution in American Romanticism
Remember the American Revolution? Yeah, that was a pretty big deal. The thirteen American colonies broke away from Britain, the "mother country," because they were peeved about being taxed without having political representation.
Writing in the decades after the Revolutionary War (which took place between 1775-1783), the American Romantics lived in an optimistic age, at a time when the new nation was just finding its feet. They were inspired by the ideals of the Revolution, and they had high hopes for the new nation. This was that happy, rosy time before the Civil War dashed everyone's faith in humanity to smithereens.
Chew On This
Walt Whitman's poem "I Hear America Singing" is a hymn to the new American nation.
Henry David Thoreau felt that slavery contradicted American Revolutionary ideals (huh—you think?). He speaks about slavery in his book Walden.