2. Dramatic economic and political changes in the 1820’s and 1830’s transformed the way
Americans thought about themselves and American society.
Increasing opportunities and higher standards of living encouraged many in the North to
believe that they could improve their personal lives and society as a whole.
Many obstacles stood in the way of reform:
1. American society was rigidly divided by race, gender, wealth, and religion.
2. Reforms could threaten economic progress.
3. Reforms threatened to submerge traditional institutions and values.
Reforms challenged the premises of America’s social order.
3. THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING
COLONIAL ERA – Calvinism predominated – a harsh, even ominous, religious interpretation
EARLY 18th CENTURY – religious following becomes less fervid; church-goers complain about
“dead dogs” indoctrinating them. Liberal ideas begin to challenge
Calvinism (good works count – not doomed to predestination)
GREAT AWAKENING (1730’s-40’s) – message of divine omnipotence to quash liberal thinking;
“bring the flock back.”
THOMAS PAINES’ “THE AGE OF REASONING” (1794- early 19th century) - “All churches were
set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and
profit” (a backlash). Unitarian movement follows.
SECOND GREAT AWAKENING – boiling reaction against growing liberalism. Spread to the masses
on the frontier by huge camp meetings. It was bigger than the
First Great Awakening and spawns the era of reforms.
4. The Second Great Awakening left in its wake countless converted souls, many shattered
and reorganized churches, and numerous new sects. This “revival” was spread to the
masses on the frontier by huge “camp meetings.”
Many of the “saved” soon backslid into their former sinful ways, but the revivals boosted
church membership and stimulated a variety of humanitarian reforms.
5. Bell-voiced Charles Grandison Finney was the greatest of the revival preachers of the
Second Great Awakening. He preached a version of the old-time religion, but he was also
an innovator.
A key feature of the Second Great Awakening was the feminization of religion, both in
terms of church membership and theology. They made up the majority of new church
members, and they were most likely to stay within the fold when the traveling
evangelists left town.
6. A DESERT ZION in UTAH
In 1830 Joseph Smith reported that he
had received some golden plate from an
angel.
When deciphered, they constituted the
Book of Mormon, and the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(Mormons) was launched.
7. Smith ran into serious opposition from his non-Mormon neighbors – what were the
reasons for the opposition? When Joseph Smith was murdered, Brigham Young led his
oppressed group to Utah.
8. Under the rigidly disciplined management of Brigham Young, the community became a
prosperous frontier theocracy and a cooperative commonwealth.
A crisis developed when the Washington govt. was unable to control the hierarchy of
Brigham Young, who had been made territorial governor in 1850. Serious bloodshed was
barely avoided.
9. The Mormons later ran afoul of the anti-polygamy laws passed by Congress in 1862 and
1882, and their unique marital customs delayed statehood for Utah until 1896.
10.
11. FREE SCHOOLS for a FREE PEOPLE
Tax-supported primary schools were scarce in the early years of the Republic. Why did
advocates of “free” education meet stiff opposition? And what changed the
opposition’s mind? Tax-supported public education, though lagging in the South,
triumphed between 1825 and 1850.
12. The famed little red one – room schoolhouse became the shrine of American democracy.
Regrettably, it was an imperfect shrine. Describe the problems characterizing early
American schools.
Reform was urgently needed.
Identify & describe the
reforms to improve public
education.
13. AN AGE of REFORM
As the young Republic grew, reform campaigns of all types flourished. Some reformers
were simply crackbrained cranks, but most were intelligent, inspired idealists. The
optimistic promises of the Second Great Awakening inspired countless souls to do
battle against earthly evils.
Women were particularly prominent in these reforms crusades, especially in their own
struggle for suffrage. For many women, the reform campaigns provided a unique
opportunity to escape the confines of the home and enter the arena of public affairs.
These reformers had a passionate desire to reaffirm traditional values as they plunged
further into a world forever changed by the turbulent forces of a market economy.
With naïve single-mindedness, reformers sometimes applied conventional virtues to
refurbish an older order – while events pushed them headlong into the new.
14. Sufferers from so-called insanity were still being treated with incredible cruelty.
Mental illness was not well-understood, and these individuals were thought to be
perverse and depraved – to be treated only as beasts.
Dorothy Dix emerged as the crusader for the rights of the mentally ill. Her work
resulted in improved conditions and improved understanding.
15. DEMON RUM – THE “OLD DELUDER”
The ever-present drink problem attracted
dedicated reformers. Custom, combined with a
hard and monotonous life, led to the excessive
drinking of alcohol, even among women,
clergymen, and members of Congress. Heavy
drinking decreased labor productivity,
increased workplace accidents, and fouled the
sanctity of the family. After earlier and
feebler efforts, the American Temperance
Society was formed in Boston in 1826.
Early foes of Demon Drunk adopted two major
lines of attack. One was to stress temperance
(total elimination); the other was anti-alcohol
legislation.
Mary Hunt
16. Neal Dow, the “Father of Prohibition,”
sponsored the so-called Maine Law of
1850. What did the law legislate?
How effective was the law in the
long-term?
It was clearly impossible to legislate
thirst for alcohol out of existence, but
by the eve of the Civil War, the
prohibitionists had made some inroads
– drinking did decrease a bit.
Neal Dow
17.
18. WOMEN in REVOLT
When the 19th century opened, it was still a man’s world in America and Europe – provide
examples. How did industrialization separate women and men into sharply distinct
economic roles? Female reformers, while demanding rights for women, joined in the
general reform movement of the age, fighting for temperance and the abolition of
slavery.
The women’s movement was mothered
by some arresting characters.
Prominent among them were Lucretia
Mott, Elizabeth CadyStanton, and
Susan B. Anthony.
Lucy Stone
19.
20.
21.
22. Fighting feminists met at Seneca Falls, New York, in a memorable Woman’s Rights
Convention in 1848. The defiant Stanton read a “Declaration of Sentiments,” which
declared that “all men and women are created equal.” One resolution demanded the
ballot for women. This convention launched the modern women’s rights movement.
23.
24. Many women reformers considered the
traditional wifely role equivalent to
slavery.
Would some contemporary American
women share these sentiments?
25. Men reacted to the Seneca Falls Convention with a mix of anger and ridicule. Many
considered these reformers as frustrated “trouble-makers,” threatening the family &
social stability.
The crusade for women’s rights was eclipsed by the campaign against slavery in the
decade before the Civil War. Yet women, were gradually gaining more rights, albeit slowly.
26.
27. WILDERNESS UTOPIAS
Bolstered by the utopian spirit of the age, various reformers set up more than 40
communities of a cooperative, communistic, or “communitarian” nature. The most radical
experiment was the Oneida Community, founded in New York in 1848. Identify the
unique characteristics of this community? How did the community sustain itself?
Various communistic experiments have been
attempted in America since Jamestown. But in
competition with democratic free enterprise
and free land, virtually all of them failed or
changed their methods.
28. THE DAWN of SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT
Early Americans, confronted with pioneering problems, were more interested in practical
gadgets than in pure science. The Industrial Revolution would dramatically motivate the
pursuit of science and technology. But medicine in America was still primitive by modern
standards.
People everywhere complained of ill health –
what were some of the ailments and their
causes?
Self-prescribed patent medicines were
common as well home remedies – examples?
Victims of surgical operations were
ordinarily tied down, often after a stiff
drink of whiskey. The surgeon then sawed
or cut with breakneck speed, undeterred by
the screams of the patient.
A priceless boon came in the 1840’s, when
several American doctors successfully used
laughing gas and ether as anesthetics.
29. ARTISTIC ACHIEVEMENTS
Art, like architecture in early America, contributed little of note in the first half of the
18th century. The art of painting continued to be hampered by a “brain drain” of artists,
and the Puritan prejudice that art was a sinful waste of time and often obscene.
Nevertheless, competent painters emerged. The HudsonRiver School flourished,
focusing on the beautiful American landscape.
30. TRUMPETERS of TRANSCENDENTALISM
The Transcendentalist movement of the 1830’s resulted in part from a liberalizing of
the strait jacket Puritan theology. The transcendentalists rejected the prevailing
theory of John Locke, that all knowledge comes to the mind through the senses. Truth,
rather, “transcends” the senses: it can’t be found by observation alone. Every person
possesses an inner light that can illuminate the highest truth and put him or her in
direct touch with God. The most prominent transcendentalist was Ralph Waldo
Emerson.
Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman
were other noted Transcendentalists.
31. PORTRAYERS of the PAST
A distinguished group of American historians was emerging at the same time that other
writers were winning distinction. Energetic George Bancroft is known as the “Father of
American History.”
Two other historians are read with greater pleasure and profit today. William Prescott
and Francis Parkman.
Early American historians of prominence were almost without exception New Englanders
– why? What was their biggest bias?
