The American Transcendentalists are often equated with Romanticism in nineteenth-century America. This dissertation thoroughly complicates that equation, arguing that a group of "Cautious Romantics" emerged as an alternative and conservative Romantic religious tradition. Drawing on history, art history, philosophy, literature, and theology, this dissertation provides a much fuller picture of the way European Romantic texts and authors functioned in American intellectual, cultural, and religious history by highlighting the contribution of these Cautious Romantics. Taken together, the Cautious Romantics represented a distinct religious discourse. They were American Romantics: relentless and introspective questers who emphasized epistemological intuition, artistic inspiration, and spiritual experience. In fact, some of them were the first Americans to promote European Romantic influences. Nevertheless, the Cautious Romantics continued to embrace Trinitarian Christianity, and they celebrated institutions--colleges and churches--in contrast to the often anti-institutional temperament of the Transcendentalists. Moreover, the Cautious Romantics defied religious categorization among standard antebellum groups. They were neither evangelicals, nor traditional Congregationalists, nor Unitarians. Although many became Episcopalians or Catholics, their Romantic intellectual lineage and historical relationships with one another distinguished them from their denominational kindred. Functioning on two levels, this dissertation resituates several well-known American artists and intellectuals such as Washington Allston, Orestes Brownson, Richard Henry Dana Jr., and Harriet Beecher Stowe by connecting them historically and intellectually with a wider discourse. This dissertation also unearths or re-contextualizes numerous lesser-known religious intellectuals such as Richard Henry Dana Sr., James Marsh, Sophia Dana Ripley, George Allen, Henry Hope Reed, Gulian Verplanck, Leonard Woods Jr., and Isaac Hecker. While conservative, these intellectuals were neither committed to the antebellum American South's unique conservative vision nor did they celebrate the free-market conservatism common in twentieth-century America. Thus, in addition to its contribution to intellectual and religious history, this dissertation contributes to a growing body of literature on cultural conservatism in America. Moreover, although the Cautious Romantics were American, this dissertation highlights the important historical relationships between the Cautious Romantics and Coleridge, Wordsworth, the Roman Catholic Church, and, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's case, transatlantic social reform, thereby demonstrating the transatlantic nature of Romanticism in the nineteenth century.

The selected letters of George Ripley, 1828-1841, constitute an important source of information about New England Transcendentalism and its literary, philosophical, and political manifestations. These 36 letters from 1828 to 1841 chronicle Ripley's integral involvement in the most significant achievements of the Transcendentalists, translation of European literature, the various controversies with the Unitarian establishment, the formation of the Transcendental Club, and participation in the many reform movements of the period. Specifically, these letters detail Ripley's career as minister of Boston's Purchase Street Church, his missionary work for the American Unitarian Association, the production of his Specimens of Standard Foreign Literature, his relationships with many of the leading Transcendentalists, and his founding the experimental community, Brook Farm.Ripley's letters are presented here in fully edited form. Transcriptions were produced from photocopies of the original manuscripts, creating a genetic text which retains, as much as possible, the exact form of the handwritten letter. Each letter is fully annotated, and an index topeople, publications, and important ideas is provided. An extensive introductory essay outlines important events in Ripley's life and discusses the contribution the letters make both to an understanding of Ripley and to an important period in American letters. / Department of English

This paper focuses on the Secret Six who consisted of Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Samuel Gridley Howe, George Luther Stearns, and Gerrit Smith, and the concepts that these men believed in regarding the type of society they wanted established in the United States. The dominant theme in the minds of this Secret Six was the romantic belief in the free individual. The belief in the free individual living in a free, progressive society held out the promise that America could become a perfect community of autonomous individuals and an example for all the world. But the Secret Six realized that for America to be this perfect community of autonomous individuals, America had to be freed of any determinism in its institutions. These six crusaders had such faith in their theories of individualism, that they abandoned moral persuasion and accepted violence as the principal means of establishing their society. These men believed that only the type of an individual who was willing to use violence if necessary and to die for the dictates of his conscience, could reform America into a community that exemplified to the world a belief in the free individual.