Throughout the first half of the 19th century, America looked in the mirror and saw that it was good. As a beacon of democracy, the United States seemed to shine as the light of the world, demonstrating through the election of President Andrew Jackson in 1828 that even a commoner from the countryside had the potential to rise to the top of the political hierarchy. At another level, under the growing success and influence of the Industrial Revolution, the American people seemed largely to ascribe to the belief that nature could be conquered by man, that no danger posed by the natural world was beyond the salvation offered by human technology . And then there was the all-encompassing vision of manifest destiny, the blessed calling of the nation to expand its territory from ocean to ocean and thus fulfill its purpose as a paradigm of virtue amid the savagery of the New World. Beneath the surface of any favorable reflection, however, lurked shadows of hypocrisy that cast silent judgments on these shining images of prosperity: that democracy empowered people, but only if they were white males; the reality that with industrial progress came egalitarian regression; and the truth that Manifest Destiny served as nothing more than an imperialist justification, a sort of divine mandate, for the removal and massacre of countless Native Americans. This tension between negative undertone and positive façade, between dark realities and their euphemized reflections, created a critical dissonance in the 19th century. century, so much so that the nation appeared seemingly promising on the surface, yet remained ravaged by storms of contradictions beneath. Perhaps inspired by this internal struggle between the illusion... the middle of the paper... the only reality in the person's mind. Works Cited Fisher, Benjamin F. The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.Gargano, James W. “‘The Black Cat’: Perverseness Reconsidered.” Twentieth-century interpretations of Poe's stories. Ed. William L. Howarth. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. 87-94. Print.Hammond, JR Edgar Allan Poe Companion: The Stories. London: MacMillan Press, 1981. Print.Jones, Paul Christian. “Slavery and abolition”. Edgar Allan Poe in context. Ed. Kevin A. Hayes. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013. 138-147. Print.Quinn, Arthur H. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. 1941. Print.Robinson, E. Arthur. “Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.” Criticisms of Poe. Ed. David B. Kesterson. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1973. 107-115. Press.