Weakening Weakening SpiritualitySpiritualityWeakening Weakening SpiritualitySpirituality

Symptoms:

The Enlightenment

Deism

Unitarianism

1. The Second GreatAwakening

“Spiritual Reform From Within”

[Religious Revivalism]

Social Reforms & Redefining the Ideal of Equality

Temperance

Asylum &Penal

Reform

Education

Women’s Rights

Abolitionism

In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America, I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country… Religion was the foremost of the political institutions of the United States.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1832

The Rise of Popular Religion

R1-1

“The Pursuit of Perfection”

In Antebellum America

“The Benevolent Empire”:

1825 - 1846

The “Burned-Over” District

in Upstate New York

Second Great AwakeningRevival Meeting

The ranges of tents, the fires, reflecting light…; the candles and lamps illuminating the encampment; hundreds moving to and fro…;the preaching, praying, singing, and shouting,… like the sound of many waters, was enough to swallow up all the powers of contemplation.

Charles G. Charles G. FinneyFinney

(1792 – 1875)(1792 – 1875)

Said to have converted over 500,000 people

R1-2

1816 American Bible Society Founded

The Mormons(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day

Saints)

Joseph Smith (1805-1844)

e 1823 --> Golden Tablets

e 1830 --> Book of Mormon

The Mormon “Trek”

Mormon Trekkers Crossing the Mississippi on the Ice

•Driven out of Illinois after the murder of founder Joseph Smith in 1844, the Mormons wintered near Council Bluffs, Iowa Territory, before beginning the long overland trek to Utah.

The Mormon World•After Joseph Smith’s murder at Carthage in 1844, the Mormons abandoned their thriving settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois (which had about twenty thousand inhabitants in 1845) and set out for the valley of the Great Salt Lake, then still part of Mexico. When the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 brought the vast Utah Territory into the United States, the Mormons rapidly expanded their desert colony, which they called Deseret, especially along the “Mormon Corridor” that stretched from Salt Lake to southern California.

The Mormons(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day

Saints)

e Deseret community.

e Salt Lake City, UT

Brigham Young(1801-1877)

Steve Young(1961-present)

Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)

The Shakers(United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second

Appearing)

• Established a communistic society in Lebanon, NY

• Began in 1776. Five members left today in Sabbathy Lake Village, Maine

• Set up about 20 religious communities

• Membership about 6,000 by 1840

Shaker Meeting

2. Temperance Movement

Frances WillardThe Beecher Family

1826 - American Temperance Society

“Demon Rum”!

R1-6

Annual Consumption of Alcohol

Temperance Banner Lithograph, by Kellogg and Comstock, ca. 1848–1850

The Drunkard’s Progress

From the first glass to the grave, 1846

3. Penitentiary Reform

Dorothea Dix(1802-1887)

1821 first penitentiary foundedin Auburn, NY

R1-5/7

4. Social Reform Prostitution

The “Fallen Woman”Sarah Ingraham

(1802-1887)

e 1835 Advocate of Moral Reform

e Female Moral Reform Society focusedon the “Johns” & pimps, not the girls.

R2-1

5. The Anti-Masonic Movement

Freemasons Anti-Masons

e individual belief in God

e international brotherhood

e middle- and upper-classappeal

e elitist and secret

e un-American &un-democratic

e anti-republicanism

View of a MasonTaking His First Oath

6. Abolitionist Movemente 1816 American Colonization

Society created (gradual, voluntary emancipation.

British Colonization Society symbol

7. Women’s Rights“Cult of

Domesticity”e A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was arefuge from the cruel world outside).

e Market Revolution separated men and women into distinct economic roles

e Women viewed as physically and emotionally weak, but also as artistic and refined

e “Republican Motherhood”-Women seen as societies conscience with a special responsibility to raise children with to become productive citizens

Early 19c Women1. Unable to vote.2. Legal status of a minor.3. Single could own her own

property.4. Married no control over her

property or her children.5. Could not initiate divorce. If

her husband divorced her, she had no custody rights

6. Couldn’t make wills, sign a contract, or bring suit in court without her husband’s permission.

What It Would Be Like If Ladies Had Their Own

Way!

Cult of Domesticity = SlaveryThe 2nd Great Awakening inspired women to

improve society. Some women wanted to break away from the role of homemaker and participate in the public life.

Angelina Grimké Sarah Grimké

e Southern Abolitionists

Lucy Stone

e American Women’sSuffrage Assoc.

e edited Woman’s Journal

Women’s Rights

Lucretia MottElizabeth

Cady Stanton

1848 --> Seneca Falls Convention: Declaration of Sentiments

•Declared all men and women created equal•Formally demanded women’s suffrage•Launched modern feminist movement•Fiercely opposed by press and churchesResult-not much. Women’s movement overshadowed by abolitionists and Civil War

8. Transcendentalism(European Romanticism)

e “Liberation from understanding and the cultivation of reasoning.”

e Transcend” the senses and allow the emotions, the soul, intuition, to make meaning of the world around you.

e Every person possesses and “inner light” that can illuminate the highest truth and put him/her in direct touch with God, or the “Oversoul”.

e Individualism in matters of religion as well as social.

e Commitment to self-reliance, self-culture, and self discipline.

e Hostile to formal institutions of any kind and conventional wisdom

Transcendentalist Intellectuals/Writers

Concord, MA

Ralph WaldoEmerson

Ralph WaldoEmerson

Henry DavidThoreau

Henry DavidThoreau

Nature(1832) Walden

(1854)

Resistance to Civil

Disobedience(1849)

Self-Reliance (1841)

“The American Scholar”

(1837) R3-1/3/4/5

e pursuit of the ideal led to a distorted view of human nature and possibilities: * The Blithedale Romance

The Anti-Transcendentalist:Nathaniel Hawthorne

(1804-1864)

e accept the world as an imperfect place: * Scarlet Letter * House of the Seven Gables

9. Utopian Communities

The Oneida CommunityNew York, 1848

John Humphrey Noyes(1811-1886)

e Millenarianism --> the 2nd

coming of Christ had already occurred.e Humans were no longer obliged to follow the moral rules of the past.• all residents

married to each other.• carefully regulated “free love.”

Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)

The Shakers(United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second

Appearing)

• Established a communistic society in Lebanon, NY

• Began in 1776. Five members left today in Sabbathy Lake Village, Maine

• Set up about 20 religious communities

• Membership about 6,000 by 1840

Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)

e If you will take up your crosses against the works of generations, and follow Christ in theregeneration, God will cleanse you from allunrighteousness.

e Remember the cries of those who are in need and trouble, that when you are in trouble, God may hear your cries.

e If you improve in one talent, God will give you more.

The Shakers

R1-4

Shaker Meeting

Shaker 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.

Shaker Simplicity & Utility

The Last Shaker Village:

Sabbathy Lake, Maine

Last Shaker Village at Sabbathy Lake, Maine

Secular Utopian Communities

IndividualFreedom

Demands ofCommunity Life

e spontaneity

e self-fulfillment

e discipline

e organizationalhierarchy

Tension

Brook Farm 1841-1846

West Roxbury, MA

George Ripley (1802-1880)

Robert Owen (1771-1858)

Utopian Socialist

“Village of Cooperation”-New Harmony founded in 1835

Original Plans for New Harmony, IN

New Harmony in 1832

New Harmony, IN

10. Educational Reform

Move from Religious Training to Secular Education

e MA always on the forefront of public educational reform * 1st state to establish tax support for local public schools.

e By 1860 every state offered free public education to whites. * US had one of the highest literacy rates.

“Father of American Education”

Horace Mann (1796-1859)

e children were clay in the hands of teachers and school officialse children should be “molded” into a state of perfectione discouraged corporal punishmente established state teacher- training programs

R3-6

The McGuffey Eclectic Readers

e Used religious parables to teach “American values.”e Teach middle class morality and respect for order.e Teach “3 Rs” + “Protestant ethic” (frugality, hard work, sobriety)R3-8

Women Educatorse Troy, NY Female Seminarye curriculum: math, physics, history, geography.e train female teachers

Emma Willard(1787-1870)

Mary Lyons(1797-1849)

e 1837 she established Mt. Holyoke [So. Hadley, MA] as the first college for women.

► These artists captured the undiluted power of nature► Paint the nation’s most spectacular and undeveloped areas [the new Garden of Eden].► Nature was the best source of wisdom & fulfillment.► They created visual embodiments of the ideals of the Transcendentalists. * painting is the vehicle through which the universal mind could reach the mind of mankind. * art is the agent of moral & spiritual transformation.

The Hudson River SchoolThe Hudson River SchoolThe Hudson River SchoolThe Hudson River School

1. Paint grand, scenic vistas.

2. Humans are an insignificant [even non-existent] part of the picture.

3. Experiment with affects of light on water and sky.

4. Symbol of the school --> a broken tree stump

Characteristics of the Hudson River SchoolCharacteristics of the Hudson River School

“A new art for a new land.”

In Nature’s WonderlandThomas Doughty, 1835

Niagara – Frederic Church, 1857

View of the Catskills, Early AutumnThomas Cole, 1837

View from Mt. Holyoke: The OxbowThomas Cole, 1836

The Course of Empire: The Savage State

Thomas Cole, 1834

The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or The Pastoral State - Thomas Cole, 1836

Kindred Spirits – Asher Durand, 1849

Watercolors by John Audubon

Stanley Hawk Barred Owl

Neo-Classical Architecture: U. S. Customs House, 1836

Jefferson Rotunda (Univ. of VA), 1819-26

The Capitol Rotunda

The Landing of the PilgrimsUnknown Artist, 1830s

Washington Crossing the DelawareEmmanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1851

George Washington Horatio Greenough, 1841

Our Banner in the Sky - Frederic Church, 1861

The Knickerbocker Group• First homegrown

American literature– Washington Irving: Rip

Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

– James Fenmore Cooper: Leatherstocking Tales, The Last of the Mohicans

– William Cullen Bryant: Thanatopsis. First high quality poetry by an American.