This is a study of materiality, spirituality and history of nineteenth-century America as they are manifested in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letters. The ideas of the two writers on Art and the material and spiritual worlds are sometimes complementary, often hold divergent viewpoints. Moreover, both writers paid much attention to history and related it to their work. The two writers are transcendentalists, however, their diversity creates a fiery way of thinking of new literary and sociopolitical forms. The two writers enjoy certain pre-dispositions of the American Artist, five characteristics that figure their texts. They also explore the moral, social, political and historical significance of the American experience. In the end, though their artistic views were divergent and frequently contradictory, the philosophies of both artists were indispensable in fashion. Their views held multiple interpretations as a tribute to the original and unique nature of the artistic American soul in its attempt to articulate the complex truths of human nature.