Originally published in 1997 and now back in print, Making the American Self by Daniel Walker Howe, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of What Hath God Wrought, charts the genesis and fascinating trajectory of a central idea in American history. One of the most precious liberties Americans have always cherished is the ability to "make something of themselves"--to choose not only an occupation but an identity. Daniel Howe considers the ideas Americans once had about a proper construction of the self. Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Bushnell, Horace Mann, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Dorothea Dix, Frederick Douglass, among others, engaged in discussion about the composition of human nature, the motivation of human behavior, and what can be done about the social problems these create. They shared a common model of human psychology, in which powerful but base passions must be mastered by reason in the service of virtue. How to accomplish this was often itself a subject of passionate controversy. The story reveals that Americans both distrusted individual autonomy and were enthusiastic about it; passions, reason, and moral sense collided on how to manage it. Howe is empathetic to all the quests - for elites and artisans, blacks and women - seeing in them a basic pursuit of identity. The author demonstrates that aspirations for "self-control" and "self-discipline," grounded in conservatism and evangelical Christianity, also shaped movements that branched leftward to promote social welfare, feminism, and civil rights. The desire for personal autonomy and self-construction is a historical bedrock of the nation's ethos.

"First published by Harvard University Press, 1997."--Title page verso.

Virtue and passion in the American Enlightenment -- Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the problem of human nature -- American founders and the Scottish enlightenment -- Political psychology of The Federalist -- Constructing character in antebellum America -- Emerging ideal of self-improvement -- Self-made men: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass -- Shaping the selves of others -- Cultivation of self among the New England Romantics -- Platonic quest in New England -- Margaret Fuller's heroic ideal of womanhood -- Constructed self against the state.