ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by paint it black,

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the mantra for goth teenage artists.

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Okay, well painters such as Thomas Cole and other members

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of the Hudson River School would most likely

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agree with which of the following ideas?

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And here are your potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right. What's this question asking?

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Well, the Hudson River School was a group of landscape painters

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whose work often featured sweeping vistas

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of the rugged American outdoors.

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So let's see which answer matches best with

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the way they saw the world.

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Would members of the Hudson River School have agreed with

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B - isolationism?

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Well, if isolationism referred to the desire to be left alone

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in the studio, painters would have been all over it.

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But it actually refers to American foreign policy,

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and they didn't really have a unified opinion

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about that topic.

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Would the painters have agreed with C - mercantilism?

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Well, mercantilism is an economic theory that promotes

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governmental regulation of the economy.

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But these painters didn't really take a firm stance

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on many economic and social issues.

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So that eliminates C and D.

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Which means painters of the Hudson River School would

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most likely have supported

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A - Manifest Destiny.

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Land wasn't just land to these painters.

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It was physical proof of God's magnificent creation,

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which, in their minds, was created for White settlers

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to inhabit and transform however they saw fit.

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And that convenient belief is the foundation of Manifest Destiny.

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So the correct answer is A.

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In fact, many wealthy industrialists patronized

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the Hudson River School because they wanted beautiful landscapes

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to justify their merciless destruction of the environment.

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So, for these painters, money really did grow on trees.

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