Motivation for Reforms

• Second Great Awakening• Social Changes due to the rise of the Market

economy• Social Changes resulting from immigration• Republican and Enlightenment ideology of

virtue and good citizenship• Transcendentalism and other Romantic

literary influences

Second Great Awakening• Began among educated people such as

Timothy Dwight, president of Yale• Dwight campus revivals motivated a

generation of young men to become evangelical preachers

• Successful preachers were audience centered and easily understood by the uneducated

• Spoke about salvation to all• Movement seemed attuned to the

democratization of American Society• Had it’s biggest impact on women

Charles G. Finney• Became the most influential figure of the

2nd Great Awakening• He appealed to people’s emotion and fear

of damnation• Prompted thousands to declare their faith• Preached that every individual could be

saved with faith and hard work• His ideas appealed to a rising middle class• NY became known as the “burned over

district” for it’s hell and brimstone revivals

Spread of the Second Great Awakening

Baptist and Methodist

• Peter Cartwright would travel from one location to another and attract thousands to hear dramatic outdoor revivals

• Preachers activated faith of many who had never belonged to a church

• By 1850 Baptists and Methodists became largest Protestant denominations in the country

Second Great Awakening

Revival Meeting

Second Great Awakening

Revival Meeting

Utopian Communities

• Communal societies based on everyone working together

• Cooperative societies that provided an escape from emerging competitive industrial and urban scene

• Most did not work well

Millennialism

• Widespread belief that world was about to end with the second coming of Jesus

• William Miller convinced tens of thousands of followers by predicting October 21, 1844 would be the 2nd coming

• Nothing happen on appointed day• Religion still continues as Seventh-Day

Adventist

Mormons• 1823 Joseph Smith

experienced a vision where angel directed him to golden tablets

• 1830 he translated the tablets into the Book of Mormon and founder the Church of Latter Day Saints

• Mormons were persecuted for belief in polygamy in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri

• Polygamy-allowing man to have more than one wife

Violence Against Mormons

Violence Against Mormons

Mormons

• 1844 Smith was murdered by angry mob in Illinois over polygamy

• Brigham Young led the exodus of Mormons to the Great Salt Lake in Utah (1847)

The Mormon “Trek”The Mormon “Trek”

New Harmony• Founded in 1825 by Robert

Owen• Located in Indiana• Cooperative labor and collective

ownership were to abolish poverty

• Socialism• Founded first American

kindergarten• After 2 years failed due to

laziness

Original Plans for New Harmony, IN

Original Plans for New Harmony, IN

New Harmony in 1832

Brook Farm

• Founded by George Ripley in 1841

• Emerson, Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller among founders

• Believed in plain living and high thinking

• Bad fire and heavy debts ended community after five years

The Shakers• Established in Lebanon, NY• 6000 members by 1840• Communal property• pacifists• Believed in celibacy, marriage

was forbidden• Equality between genders• New members were adopted

as orphans or recruited through conversion

• Died out due to lack of new recruits

Shaker HymnShaker Hymn'Tis the gift to be simple, 'Tis the gift to be

free,'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,And when we find ourselves in the place just right,'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gainedTo bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,To turn, turn will be our delight,'Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Oneida Community• Founded in 1848 by John Humphrey

Noyes • Located in NY• Believed in shared property, shared

marriage and communal care of children• Practiced free love and birth control• Equality of genders• Community flourished over 30 years

largely due to skilled craftsmen making steel traps, silver plates and silverware

• Leaders fled to Canada to escape persecution for adultery

Transcendentalists

• Emerged in New England 2nd quarter of the 19th century

• Influenced by a new Romantic movement• Liberation from understanding and the

cultivation of reasoning

Transcendentalists Beliefs

• Simple life and return to nature• Withdrawal from society, utopias• Rejection of authority• Individualism and self-reliance• Every person posses an inner light that can put

him in direct touch with god

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Nature (1832)• Self-Reliance (1841)• Stressed self reliance,

self-confidence, self improvement, optimism and freedom

Henry David Thoreau

• Resistance to Civil Disobedience (1849)- written when he was in jail for refusing to pay taxes over the Mexican War

• Civil disobedience- passive resistance- inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

• Walden (1854)

Transcendentalist Critic

• Nathaniel Hawthorne• Their pursuit of the ideal led to

distorted view of human nature and possibilities

• One should accept the world as an imperfect place

Education

• Massachusetts went to forefront of public education

• 1st state to establish tax support for public schools

• Horace Mann was the father of American education

• By 1860 every state offered free education to whites

• U.S. had one of the highest literacy rates in the world

Horace Mann’s beliefs

• Children were clay in the hands of teachers and school officials to be molded into a state of perfection

• Discouraged corporal punishment• Established state teacher training

programs ( normal schools) • Encouraged equality opportunity

within a society

The McGuffey Eclectic Readers

• Used religious parables to teach American values and patriotism

• Teach morality and respect for order

• Teach 3Rs plus Protestant ethic frugality, hard work and sobriety

Noah Webster

• Published the American Dictionary• Helped to Standardize American English

Dorothea Dix- Worked to improve treatment of

the mentally ill and prison reform

- Traveled 30,000 over 8 years reporting first on treatment of insane

- Her efforts resulted improved conditions and states created new hospitals and asylums Dorothea Dix

(1802-1887)

Dorothea Dix Asylum - 1849Dorothea Dix Asylum - 1849

Temperance Movement

• Crusade aimed to combat heavy consumption of alcohol

• Temperance- moderate use of alcohol rather than abstention

• Movement was motivated by anti-immigrant bias

Temperance Movement

• Religious leaders and employers supported the movement

• Women very active in the movement

Temperance Movement• 1826- American Temperance

Society was formed• Alcohol was seen as the

cause of poverty• Alcohol decreased work

productivity and increased work place injuries

• Alcohol caused domestic violence against women and children

Demon Rum

Temperance Movement

• 1851 Maine passed a law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol (Neal Dow- Father of Prohibition)

• Movement faded due to the abolition Movement

ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENTS

Abolition Movement

• Abolition- movement to abolish slavery

• American Colonization Society- (Back to Africa Movement)

Back to Africa Movement

• Create a free slave state in West Africa (Liberia)

• Proposed because it was believed that whites and blacks could not co-exist

• Most free blacks considered themselves American few emigrated

William Lloyd Garrison

• Was abolitionist who published The Liberator abolitionists newspaper

• Believed slavery undermined republican virtues

• Believed in immediate emancipation of slaves with no compensation

• Slavery was moral issue not an economic issue

David Walker

• Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World• Fight for freedom rather than wait for whites

to set you free

Frederick Douglass

• Escaped slave who purchased his freedom by selling his autobiography

• The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass• Began an abolitionists newspaper The North

Star• What to a Slave is the Fourth of July?- was a

contrast between the ideals expressed in Declaration of Independence and the realities of slavery

“The white man’s happiness cannot be

purchased by the black man’s misery…All

distinctions founded on complexion ought to

be…abolished, and every right, privilege, and

immunity, now enjoyed by the white man, ought to be as freely granted to the man of color.”

~Frederick Douglass, The North Star

Harriet Tubman

• A former slave who helped with Underground Railroad

• Underground Railroad- secret network of people who help slaves escape

• Tubman most famous conductor• Called black Moses

Women in Society

-cult of domesticityhusband, children, home,

church

Women have/want no place or rights in public dealings

-could not vote in most places

-could not own property or keep wages if husband lived

- Women were very active in the temperance and abolition movement

Prevailing customs demanded that women restrict their activities after marriage to the home and family. Housework and childcare were considered the only proper activities for married women. Women could neither vote nor sit on juries, and typically, when a woman married, her property and any money she earned became her husband. In many instances, married women lacked guardianship rights over their children.

Grimke Sisters

• Sarah and Angelina Grimke very active in the women rights and abolition movement

• They tried to convince women that slavery should be abolished because it was immoral

• Angelina appealed to women as Christians and mothers

Sojourner Truth

• Former slave who was part of the abolition and women rights movement

• Became a preacher

Women’s Movement

-Seneca Falls Convention, 1848

First women’s rights movement in U.S. History

Organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

“Declaration of Sentiments”

-”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal”

Protested the lack of legal and political rights for women

Called for women’s suffrage

Susan B. Anthony famous women’s rights activist

“Resolved, That all laws which prevent women from occupying such a station in

society as her conscience shall dictate, or which place her in a position inferior to that of man, are contrary to the great precept of nature, and therefore of no

force or authority.Resolved, That woman is man’s equal—

was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands

that she should be recognized as such.”~Resolutions accepted at Seneca Falls

Seneca Falls DeclarationSeneca Falls Declaration

Lucy Stone

• Avid abolitionists• Retained maiden name

after she married• Women who followed

her were called Lucy Stoners

• Edited the woman’s Journal

Availability of Information

• Explosive growth in the availability of reading material:–Newspapers (most widely

distributed)–Books–Magazines–Personal Letters

Everyone Loves Reading

• By 1820, all but the poorest of people could read and write

• Many made their livings selling Bibles, newspapers, novels, etc.

• Novels read mostly by women• Spread of silent reading as activity for the

masses• The Power of Sympathy (1789)- #1 best selling

novel- 1st real American novel?

Knickerbocker School of Writers

• Group of writers who helped to promote nationalism and a new American culture

• James Fenimore Cooper wrote of pioneer life in his novels- The Last of the Mohicans

• Herman Melville- Moby Dick

Knickerbocker School of Writers

• Washing Irving- wrote short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip van Winkle”

• Nathaniel Hawthorne- “The Scarlet Letter”

• Edgar Allan Poe- virtually invented the horror and mystery stories- “ The Raven”

American Culture

-Hudson River School- American landscape painters- Natural and

immense beauty of American landscape

- Thomas Cole and Frederick Church

-Alex de Tocqueville“Democracy in America”

Women Writers

• Domestic Fiction- readings popular with women• Sarah Josepha Hale- Godey’s Lady’s Book

– First mass-circulation magazine for women• Susan Warner- The Wide, Wide World

– Broke sales record’s in 1850’s• Harriet Beecher Stowe- Uncle Tom’s Cabin

– Broke sales record of Warner in 1852– Best selling book of all time up to that point (except

for the bible

Popular Culture

• Blood Sports- Cock fighting- Billy goat fighting- Boxing - Dog fights

• Often set up at saloons• Usually in lower class

sections of town

Boxing

• Imported from Britain• Rose in popularity during the 1840’s-50’s• Best American Boxers were New York City

Butchers• Boxers fought with bare knuckles• Only ended in knockout• Christopher Lilly vs. Thomas McCoy• Respect that crossed ethnic boundaries

American Theater

• Initially only in seaport cities and only attended by urban elite

• Improvements in transportation and communication changed that

• Most catered to male audiences• Theater layout divided by status and

class

Theater Layout

• Upper Balcony- Poor• 2nd Balcony- Prostitutes• Ground floor benches (“pit”)-

artisans and workingmen• Boxes- Wealthy• “Pit” and Upper Balcony would

“participate” in the show

Minstrel Shows

• Normally lasted an hour and half and were divided into three sections- Section 1- Songs and dance with audience

participation- Section 2- political satire- Section 3- songs, dances and jokes• Blatantly racist