This is one chapter of what would be a book of American literary history. Overall, the book would focus on the impact of different technological advents in the United States and their impact on the literary movements of different time periods, which all line up conveniently well. The major increases in technology from the formation of America to the present day are electricity/the lightbulb, the railroad, the refrigerator car, the automobile, the radio, the television, and the internet. This one chapter of American literary history focuses on the advent of the railroad, starting with the foundation of the Baltimore and Ohio in 1828 and ending with the Civil War, the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, and the invention of the refrigerated railroad car in 1875. The major literary event in this time period was the transcendentalist movement, and the main authors in this movement were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Through the use of YouTube videos integrated into a website, the learner will be able to view different pages to gain knowledge of the two authors, the history of the railroads at the time, and the relation between the railroads and the authors.
These topics are so compatible due to their prevalence in the selected time period. The first railroad in the United States was formed in 1828, and from 1828 to 1870, mileage expanded from 0 to 53,000. The railroad was such a major movement in American History that Charles Carroll, the man who broke ground and laid the first stone of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, said, “I consider this among the most important acts of my life, second only to my signing the Declaration of Independence, if even it be second to that.” In chapter 4 of Walden, Henry David Thoreau says, “When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving… When I hear the iron horse make the hills echo… shaking the earth with his feet… it seems as if the earth had got a race now worth to inhabit it.” Through these two famous lines, one can see the impact that the railroad had on American history and on transcendentalism, and given how close Emerson and Thoreau were to each other, it can be assumed that Emerson felt the same as Thoreau did about the railroads.