In his poem On the Emigration to America and Peopling the Western Country, Freneau writes,From Europe's proud despotic shores hither the stranger takes his way, And in our new found world explores a happier soil, a milder sway where no proud despot holds him down, no slaves insult him with a crown?While virtue warm the generous breast, there heaven-born freedom shall reside, nor shall the voice of war molest, nor Europe's all-aspiring pride- There Reason shall new laws devise, and order from confusion rise (351-352)
? Freneau was one of many an American who saw America as the key to freedom and individuality and the dream of justice.
James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Leather-Stocking Tales, embraced this new literary convention and created his own American voice through the character of Natty Bumpo. Even when his writing style came up wanting, Fennimore's vision never wavered,The literature of the United States is a subject of the highest interest to the civilized world, for when it does begin to be felt, it will be felt with a force, a directness, and a common sense in its application, that has never yet been known (462).? In Cooper's novel The Pioneers, Natty Bumpo states,I may say not guilty with a clean conscience, for there's no guilt in doing what's right.? Natty Bumpo was Cooper's vision of a man who had spent his life embracing his individuality and living by his own creed of morality, a theme that would continue to be reflected in the literature of this new nation.
Where Cooper struggled with his writing style, Ralph Waldo Emerson did not. Emerson took up the cause with the theme of self-reliance, also a uniquely American voice. Emerson eloquently proclaims the need for self-reliance,To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,-that is genius (538).? Again, in his work The Poet, Emerson writes about his vision of a new American,'the Knower, the Doer, and the Sayer.