"There shall be sung another golden age," prophesied the poet George Berkeley in 1752, "westward the course of empire takes its way." With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and subsequent explorations by Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Stephen Long, and John C. Fremont, the West captured the American public's imagination. To many Americans, the new territories and the lands beyond stretching to the Pacific Ocean held great promise. No longer would America be subordinate to England and Europe. The new lands heralded, as Berkeley's verses put it, "the rise of empire and of arts." The golden age seemed on the verge of realization. As the American empire spread West, the arts followed; artists and writers such as George Catlin, a Philadelphia portraitist who traveled the interior for eight years, began to explore and report on the new frontier. Others, such as the Eastern novelist.....
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