III.

Toward Independence: The 1700s

During the 1700s, American prose underwent tremendous changes in form, theme, and purpose as the colonies moved toward declaring their independence from Great Britain. As the century began, prose remained primarily religious in its endeavors to make sense of what still seemed a decidedly new world. As the century wore on, political thought—especially regarding the relationship between the colonies and the mother country—increasingly occupied American writers.

A.

Religious Writings

American religious writing in the 1700s reached a height of drama in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741), the best-known sermon by clergyman Jonathan Edwards. The strength of this appeal to religious fear left his congregation in tears. A powerful orator, Edwards led a revival movement known as the Great Awakening to revitalize religious practice in the colonies. Edwards's ideas were a complicated mix, shaped not only by his study and love of the Puritans but also by 17th- and 18th-century European philosophy. Some of Edwards's best religious works were also philosophical investigations. In A Careful and Strict Enquiry into … Notions of … Freedom of Will … (1754), Edwards argues that human actions are predetermined by God, thus negating the notion of free will.

Cotton Mather remained an important literary figure in the 18th century. His Magnalia Christi Americana (The Great Works of Christ in America, 1702) is an epic history of New England that celebrates the founding generation of Puritans. Like his earlier works, it is profoundly religious; however, its size, scope, and interest in the human side of the Puritan founders marked a new achievement in American literary history. Mather's prolific career included writings on science and medicine as well as theology and history. His Sentiments on the Small Pox Inoculated (1721) was instrumental in introducing the smallpox vaccine to New England.

As Mather's career indicates, the scope of American prose began to broaden after 1700. In The Negro Christianized (1706), Mather also became one of the first Americans to address issues of race by arguing that Africans should receive Christian education and be allowed to join the church. Slavery had been introduced to the American colonies in the early 17th century. By the early 18th century, antislavery sentiments were rising. In 1700 New England judge Samuel Sewall published a strong antislavery tract, The Selling of Joseph, which drew on both legal and biblical references.

B.

Travel Narratives

A new genre for American writers, the travel narrative, would become especially influential late in the 1700s. One of the first was written by a schoolteacher, Sarah Kemble Knight. The Journal of Madam Knight, written in 1704 although not published until 1825, gives a lively account of her journey through hostile Indian territory. Knight was less interested in religious explanations for her experience than Rowlandson had been some 20 years earlier, and more concerned with conveying the actual dangers of her day-to-day existence. Her journal is one of a long line of travel narratives that includes Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America (1778) by Jonathan Carver and Travels Through North and South Carolina … (1791) by William Bartram. Travel stories often blended observations on nature and landscape with tales of personal courage and achievement.

A book similar to the travel journal in its descriptions of experiences in a new land was Letters from an American Farmer (1782) by French writer Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur. This work also anticipated American fiction, particularly in the creation of its distinctive first-person narrator, Farmer James. Written toward the end of the American Revolution, Letters from an American Farmer was an interesting effort to describe and define what it meant to be an American.

C.

Journalism

The first successful American newspaper, the Boston News-Letter, was founded in 1704; it was joined by the Boston Gazette in 1719. At a time when newspaper journalism was concerned primarily with reporting political events, the New-England Courant, started by James Franklin in 1721, became the first newspaper to include literary entertainment. Franklin’s younger brother Benjamin Franklin published humorous social commentary in the Courant under the pen name and persona of Silence Dogood, the widow of a minister. Magazines also appeared for the first time in the colonies during the mid-1700s. Before 1800 magazines were concerned primarily with measuring America’s developing culture against the British model.

During the 1700s Boston and Philadelphia became centers of publishing in addition to being political and commercial hubs. Benjamin Franklin was a key figure in establishing a vibrant intellectual community in Philadelphia. In 1727 he and a group of friends established a men’s reading club in Philadelphia called the Junto. Members shared printed works and discussed topics of the day. Such reading and discussion clubs became an important part of American literary culture, particularly at colleges, but Franklin’s was especially influential because it evolved into a prototype for the lending library. By 1729 Franklin had started his own printing house and was editing and publishing a newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. In the 1740s his press released the first novel published in America, Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded by British author Samuel Richardson.

Women organized literary circles in the 1750s and 1760s. These groups, known as salons, resembled men’s reading clubs. They also encouraged members to compose their own work, mainly poetry. Some of these writings have been preserved or recovered but many of the manuscripts, largely unpublished, have been lost or remain to be found.

D.

Political Writing

By the mid-1700s American prose was first and foremost political. Many 18th-century thinkers believed in the ability of reason to control human destiny and improve the human condition, an enormous change from the belief in predestination that broadly speaking characterized the 17th century. In America as well as in Western Europe, the 18th century was known as the Age of Enlightenment. In the American colonies Enlightenment thought was expressed chiefly through political discourse. American thinkers asserted a growing belief in the supremacy of reason over church doctrine; they also emphasized the importance of the individual and freedom over and above established authorities and institutions. America's great Enlightenment writers—Franklin, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson—also played major roles in the American Revolution.

Franklin began his literary career as a publisher but made his greatest contribution to American literature as a writer. In his writing Franklin advocated hard work as the key to success. His views come across clearly in the maxims, proverbs, and homespun wisdom that filled his Poor Richard's Almanack, which was published annually from 1733 to 1758 under the pen name Richard Saunders. Franklin’s almanac sayings were collected in The Way to Wealth (1757) in the form of a speech by a character named Father Abraham. It is one of Franklin’s great statements on the self-made man. Like much of Franklin's writing, the work reached an enormous audience through translations into European languages. Franklin’s Autobiography was first published in full in 1868, 78 years after his death; it is considered an American classic because of its portrait of Franklin and American life during his time.

Thomas Paine became a leading figure in the cause of American independence with the pamphlet Common Sense (1776). This enormously popular political document asserted that the American colonies received no advantage from Great Britain and that every consideration of common sense called for them to establish an independent republican government. Written in a straightforward style using the language of the common person, Common Sense was published six months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted. At that point, most colonists still believed that their grievances with Great Britain could be settled peaceably. Paine profoundly shook this belief, insisting that there was no turning back and making his readers feel that each person had the power and responsibility to participate in the cause of revolution.

Although it lacked the searing rhetoric of Common Sense, the Declaration of Independence was a crucial achievement in both politics and American prose. It was structured in the form of an assertion that was then proven through specific examples. The declaration was written by a committee made up of Franklin, Jefferson, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston, though Jefferson was ultimately responsible for most of the phrasing. The declaration and the Constitution of the United States (1787) were key statements of American freedom, but as collaborative documents they necessitated compromises to satisfy all of their authors. One of the most significant compromises was the absence of any mention of slavery. Slavery was antithetical to the ideals of the American Revolution, but for the sake of unity with the Southern colonies, whose economy was rooted in slavery, no protest was made against it as a social evil.

A final flurry of political writing at the close of the century arose from the debate over ratification of the Constitution. Federalists supported the strong central government outlined in the Constitution, while an anti-Federalist faction opposed it. A series of essays supporting ratification was published in 1787 and 1788 and circulated in pamphlets. The essays, later published as The Federalist, were written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay.

E.

Voices Outside the Mainstream

While the debate on individual rights and government powers went on, some whose rights were not under debate spoke up. From 1774 to 1783 Abigail Adams conducted an extensive correspondence with her husband, John Adams, while they were separated during the Revolution and its aftermath. These letters, which were published as Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife, Abigail (1876), describe in detail everyday life in the young nation. Remarkably, in letters written during the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, she asked that women's rights and status be considered as part of this statement of human rights. Her requests were not radical by today's standards, but they constituted bold steps for her day. Judith Sargent Murray, a Boston writer, vigorously argued against the notion that women were not equipped for work in the public sphere. Her essay “On the Equality of the Sexes” was published in 1790 in the Massachusetts Magazine.

Slave narratives recorded another side of life in America. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789) has long been considered a primary African American text. The title alone made a significant statement: Equiano reclaimed the priority of his African identity (Olaudah Equiano) and subordinated the slave name (Gustavus Vassa) he was given by his captors. Scholars today are unsure as to Equiano’s birthplace and life history, and the text may be an early example of the autobiographical slave narrative or possibly a blend of experience and fiction. Either way, the work was highly influential as slavery became a prominent topic of political discussion in the 19th century.

Conversion to Christianity provided a focus for several early American autobiographies, including Equiano's and the first-known Native American autobiography in English. “A Short Narrative of My Life” was written in 1768 by Samson Occum, a member of the Mohegan tribe who became a Presbyterian minister. The work was not published in its entirety until 1982.

F.

The First American Fiction

American fiction became formally established only after the American Revolution. The Power of Sympathy (1789), a tragic love story by William Hill Brown, is generally considered the first American novel. Charles Brockden Brown is among the best-remembered novelists of the period. His Wieland; or, The Transformation (1798) is a cleverly plotted horror story that emphasizes dark, supernatural visions. Other notable novels of the time include Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple (1791), a tragic romance that involves a young woman’s journey from England to the colonies during the Revolution; Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants (1793), the story of an English family whose life improves in America; and Hannah Foster's The Coquette (1797), a novel in the form of letters.