Ralph Waldo Emerson was the founder of a distinct American intellectual tradition and a key figure in the antebellum (pre–Civil War) transcendentalist movement. He espoused an ideal of manliness rooted in scholarly activity, self-knowledge, intellectual dissent, and individual autonomy, a concept that grew out of early-nineteenth-century ideas about manhood. However, although Emerson's celebration of individual autonomy suited the surging individualism engendered by the antebellum market revolution and the egalitarian spirit of Jacksonian democracy, he initially eschewed the emerging entrepreneurial model of manhood promoted by proponents of capitalist development.