Many early Americans sought the opportunity to "make something of themselves"-not only to choose an occupation but to fulfill their potential, to engage in "self-improvement." This book reconstructs their project from the time of Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin to that of Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Fuller, and Frederick Douglass.

Daniel Walker Howe is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus, Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of What Hath God Wrought (OUP 2007), which won the Pulitzer Prize in History, The Unitarian Conscience, and The Political Culture of the American Whigs. He lives in Los Angeles.

• Introduction


• I Virtue and Passion in the American Enlightenment


• 1: Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Problem of Human Nature


• 2: The American Founders and the Scottish Enlightenment


• 3: The Political Psychology of The Federalist


• II Constructing Character in Antebellum America


• 4: The Emerging Ideal of Self-Improvement


• 5: Self-Made Men: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass


• 6: Shaping the Selves of Others


• III The Cultivation of the Self Among the New England Romantics


• 7: The Platonic Quest in New England


• 8: Margaret Fuller's Heroic Ideal of Womanhood


• 9: The Constructed Self Against the State


• Conclusion


• Notes