The Northeast became the first industrial center for the U.S. for a variety of reasons, including an abundance of natural resources, a vast amount of ports were easily accessed, better education made for skilled laborers, overpopulation made labor cheap, and fast flowing rivers were power sources for factories. The North had many natural resources such as lumber, furs, and iron; New Englanders took advantage of these native resources and the South’s resources, like cotton, to manufacture goods. Additionally, the Northeast also had an abundance of natural harbors containing busy ports, facilitating the large exportation of manufactured goods and importation of raw materials. Because of urbanization in the North, education was more common and …show more content…
The Knickerbocker group’s members were influential early American literature writers, they popularized writing about America and wrote stories that took place in it’s landscapes. These acts of nationalism were significant because it gave Americans a sense of pride in their country and individualism in their identity apart from Europe. Additionally, the Hudson River School consisted of a band of artists, most of them living in New York, who created artwork of landscapes in the Hudson River Valley and surrounding areas. They didn’t only paint landscapes, they also attempted to capture American ideals of romanticism and often had themes of exploration and settlement. Furthermore, the paintings of romanticism illustrated the artists nationalism by showing their ignorance to America’s problems and painting a “perfect world” or kind of utopia. The outbreak in popularity of transcendentalism at the time showed the efforts of the country to try and improve society. By highlighting the importance of the common man, transcendentalism rapidly gained traction because it’s exactly what the people wanted; those who supported the philosophy demonstrated nationalism by being concerned with the quality of