consummating empire

"Consummation of Empire," one of five panels in a series created in 1836 by Thomas Cole.

Next week, students taking "African Americans in the City" will explore the experiences of people of African descent in early America, namely in New York. Among their readings is an excerpt from Thomas Bender's look at the ways in which everyone from politicians to artists weighed the value of urban life as opposed to rural living. As Bender tells us, when Thomas Jefferson became president, few Americans believed this country's future could be linked to the progress of cities. Landscape artist Thomas Cole pondered such questions. Cole showed in a five-panel series of paintings, including one pictured here, how a landscape could be transformed, not always for the good, by man's "progress." He  later produced a piece revealing his belief that "nature and civilization" could coexist. The students will ponder this issue and others, among them, how slavery and freedom figured into the rise of "civilization" and "empire" in New York.