ABSTRACT
The catalytic role of property and commerce in the development of civilization, evidenced in the writings of jurists and political theorists, appeared in the fine art of the era. This chapter focuses on two books of landscape art of the pre-Civil War period, which were published fourteen years apart. The first is Nathaniel Parker Willis' 1840 American Scenery. The second is Thomas Addison Richards' 1854 American Scenery. These books served as a graphic measure of how Americans thought about their relationship to property and to nature, as well as the centrality of law in facilitating sovereignty over land and people. Leading historians of the era, like François Guizot, framed the evolution of society in terms of stages, ascribing the passage to higher stages to a series of events, including the security of property rights, the education of the people, and the presence of political liberties.
