1. Dorothea Dix - a New England teacher-author who advocated for the improved treatment of the mentally ill.

She was appointed superintendent of women nurses for the Union forces. 2. Stephen C. Foster a white Pennsylvanian that wrote, ironically, the most famous black song that captured the plaintive spirit of the slaves 3. James Russell Lowell a professor who succeeded Professor Longfellow at Harvard, ranked as one of Americas better poets. He was also a distinguished essayist, literary critic, editor, and diplomat 4. William Miller - A preacher who led the group that believed that Jesus was to come back to earth on October 22, 1844. They originated in the burned-over-district. 5. Washington Irving - born in New York City, was the first American to win international recognition as a literary figure. He was the first general writer, to gain world fame and to make New World themes respectable. 6. Oliver Wendell Holmes - a nonconformist and a conversationalist doctor, who taught anatomy at Harvard Medical School, was a prominent poet, essayist, novelist, and lecturer. 7. Lucretia Mott a Quaker whose anger had been aroused when she and her fellow female delegates to the London antislavery convention of 1840 were not recognized. 8. James Fenimore Cooper - was the first American novelist 9. Elizabeth Blackwell - was the first female graduate of a medical college 10. Horace Mann - The secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, who campaigned effectively for more and better schoolhouses, longer school terms, higher pay for teachers, and an expanded curriculum. He was a prominent proponent of public school reform 11. Peter Cartwright - the best known of the Methodist circuit riders, or traveling frontier preachers, who converted thousands to Christianity 12. Noah Webster - a Yale-educated Connecticut Yankee who was known as the Schoolmaster of the Republic, whose reading lessons, were partly designed to promote patriotism. 13. Elizabeth Cady Stanton - a mother of seven who had insisted on leaving obey out of her marriage ceremony, shocked fellow feminists by going so far as to advocate suffrage for women. She was one of those who advocated suffrage for women at the first women's right's convention in seneca, new york 1848. 14. Sylvester Graham - american clergyman whose advocacy of health regimen emphasizing temperance and vegetarianism found lasting expression in graham cracker 15. Edgar Allan Poe a lyric poet know for sharing this alcholoic nightmares in his macabre poems, such as "the raven" (1845), and short stories, including "the fall of the house of usher" (1839). 16. Susan B. Anthony - militant lecturer for womens rights, fearlessly exposed herself to rotten garbage and vulgar epithets. She became such a conspicuous advocate of female rights that progressive women everywhere were called Suzy Bs. 17. Ralph Waldo Emerson - American transcendentalist who was against slavery and stressed self-reliance, optimism, self-improvement, self-confidence, and freedom. In the address the The American Scholar, he urged American writers to throw off European traditions and delve into the riches of their own backyards. 18. Nathaniel Hawthorne a Massachusetts writer who wrote The Scarlet Letter (1850) which shows the hypocrisy and insensitivity of new england puritans by showing their cruelty to a woman who has committed adultery and is forced to wear a scarlet "a". 19. Robert Owen - a Scottish textile manufacturer who in 1825 founded a communal society of about a thousand people at New Harmony, Indiana 20. Henry David Thoreau - a poet, a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a nonconformist. Condemning a government that supported slavery, he refused to pay his Massachusetts poll tax and was jailed for a night.* A gifted prose writer, he is well known for Walden: Or Life in the Woods (1854).