AP US History
Chapter 11 – Technology, Culture, and Everyday Life, 1840-1860
Identifications: After reading Chapter 11, you should be able to identify and explain the
historical significance of each of the following:
John Deere/steel tipped plow
Cyrus McCormick/mechanical reaper
Eli Whitney
Samuel Colt
Elias Howe
Samuel F.B. Morse
Catherine Beecher
railroad boom
row houses
balloon-frame houses
Crawford Long/William Morton
hydropathy
Sylvester Graham/Grahamites
Phrenology
New York Herald/James G. Bennett
penny press
New York Tribune/Horace Greeley
minstrel shows
P.T. Barnum/American Museum
Washington Irvin
American Renaissance
James Fenimoore Cooper
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Margaret Fuller
Walt Whitman
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Edgar Allen Poe
Landscape Artists
George Catlin
Hudson River School
Thomas Cole
Asher Durand
Frederick Church
Landscape Architects
Frederick Law Olmstead
Calvert Vaux
Thought Questions:
1. In the 1830’s Ralph Waldo Emerson called for a probing exploration of American
nationality in literature and art. To what extent did the writers and painters of the
American Renaissance answer that call?
2. What was the impact on the daily lives of people and on the environment of the
technological advances in agriculture, industry, and transportation?
3. Discuss the rise of popular culture in the period 1830-1860.
4. Identify and discuss the origins and impact of transcendentalism in America during the
middle of the nineteenth century.