Even before Emerson delivered his famous "American Scholar" address in 1837, American culture and the capacity of American thinkers to come to their own conclusions had been defended. Lawyer and congressman Charles J. Ingersoll had delivered his "Discourse Concerning the Influence of America on the Mind" before the American Philosophical Society in 1823. Dr. William Ellery Channing had, in his Remarks on American Literature (published in 1830), urged the creation of a "native literature" that would be something other and better than a "repetition of the old world." Simultaneously with the ascent of Jacksonian democracy, a vigorous popular culture thrived, based upon our national experience and identity. This culture existed side by side with more complex forms of expression — Transcendentalism, for example, and aesthetic Romanticism, in the work of such artists as Washington Allston and the Hudson River School — that drew openly on foreign thought and trends.
During the period between about 1825 and the Civil War, there was a proliferation of institutions designed to enrich the average person and to promote self-culture. The lyceum (an organization providing public lectures, concerts, and other entertainment) was established in America in 1826, and spread quickly. The social library (a partnership of individuals each contributing money toward the maintenance of a book collection which each had the right to use) multiplied to promote the "general diffusion of knowledge," as worded in the by-laws of one Massachusetts social library. The public library movement gained momentum mid-century, providing opportunities for reading to many who had not had easy access to book collections. Museums were established and exhibitions set up for the edification of the middle class. The Smithsonian Institution was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1846, through the bequest of James Smithson, who, at his death in 1829, left $500,000 to the United States for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." The Crystal Palace Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations was held in New York City in 1853. Aesthetically conceived parks and public spaces were designed by landscape architects such as Frederick Law Olmsted, who undertook the design of New York's Central Park in 1857.
