In this comprehensive and insightful reinterpretation of antebellum culture, Anne C. Rose analyzes the major changes in intellectual life that occurred between 1830 and 1860 while exploring three sets of concepts that provided common languages: Christianity, democracy, and capitalism.

Whereas many interpretations of American culture in this period have emphasized a single theme - such as revivalism, slavery, reform, Jacksonian democracy, or New England's transcendentalist authors - or have been preoccupied with the ensuing Civil War, Rose considers sharply divergent tendencies in religion and politics and a wide range of reformers, authors, and other public figures.

She contends that although the key characteristic of the society in which antebellum Americans explored their ideas was openness, the freedom and creativity of antebellum thought depended on conditions of cultural security.

In tracing the genesis of a "native culture," Rose surveys the art, literature, and scholarship of the American Renaissance, citing as particularly representative the genres of photography, the short story, history, and the essay.

Rose examines Walden, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and other celebrated works associated with the American Renaissance, but she also discusses works by African Americans, Irish Americans, Native Americans, and Jewish Americans that have seldom been seen in relation to the era's more famous masterpieces.

Rose emphasizes the construction of cultural institutions and intellectual patterns that supported both the mainstream American Victorian culture and the points of view that contested conventional assumptions. Whether the language of public discussion was Christianity, democracy, or capitalism, antebellum intellectual thought, Rose argues, developed through the fervent and often tense interaction among advocates of diverse ideals.