Antebellum Reform Movements

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AntebellumRevivalismReform
Jacksonian Reforms
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The Rise of Popular Religion
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
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The Second Great Awakening
Spiritual Reform From WithinReligious
Revivalism
Social Reforms Redefining the Ideal of Equality
Temperance
Education
Abolitionism
Asylum Penal Reform
Womens Rights
Kicks off the Pursuit of Perfection in America!
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Where did the movement begin?
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The Burned-Over DistrictUpstate New York
Many NE Puritans had settled there
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Second Great AwakeningRevival Meeting
Spread to the masses on the frontier by multi-day
camp meetings
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Charles G. Finney(1792 1895)
The ranges of tents, the fires, reflecting
light the candles and lamps illuminating the
encampment hundreds moving to and frothe
preaching, praying, singing, and shouting, like
the sound of many waters, was enough to swallow
up all the powers of contemplation.
2nd Great Awakening led to the feminization of
religion women make up majority of Church
membership and move into charity work in the
reform movements it sparked.
Soul-shaking conversion!
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The Mormons(The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints)

• 1823 ? Golden Tablets
• 1830 ? Book of Mormon
• 1844 ? Murdered in Carthage, IL
• Why?

Joseph Smith (1805-1844)
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Violence Against Mormons
Why were the Mormons persecuted?
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The Mormon Trek
Why Utah?
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The Mormons

• Led by Brigham Young
• Salt Lake City, Utah
• Frontier theocracy
• Later flouted what laws in UT?

Brigham Young(1801-1877)
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Mother Ann Lee (1736-84)
The Shakers

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

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

• God is dual sided Christ is male side / Mother
  Ann Lee is female side

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Shaker Meeting
Religious fervor is sign of inspiration from God!
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Shaker Beliefs

• Men / women equal spiritually
• Celibacy
• So how did they survive so long?
• Longest lasting sect until 1940.

'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.
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Shaker Simplicity Utility
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Utopian Communities
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Robert Owen (1771-1858)
Utopian Socialist

• New Harmony - Village of Cooperation
• To be a model of the "New Moral World"
• But will dissolve in less than 3 years.

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Original Plans for New Harmony, IN
Believed an individual's character was shaped by
his or her environment, therefore, by controlling
the environment, superior character could be
developed.
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New Harmony, IN
First American kindergarten and free public school
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George Ripley (1802-1880)
BROOK FARMWest Roxbury, MA 1841
Plain Living High Thinking Transcendentalists
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a resident eventually it
burns down.
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The Oneida CommunityNew York, 1848

• Millenarianism --gt the 2nd coming of
  Christ had already occurred.

• Humans were no longer obliged to follow
  the moral rules of the past.
• All residents married to each other
• Carefully regulated free love

John Humphrey Noyes(1811-1886)

• Silver plate, steel traps

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The Oneida Community

• Birth control, eugenic selection of parents,
  communal care of children
• Noyes had to flee to Canada to escape prosecution
  for adultery
• Survive for 30 years (silverware!) and then
  change in 1880 no more communism / became
  monogamous

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Temperance Movement
1826 - American Temperance SocietyDemon Rum!
Frances Willard
Lyman Beecher the Beecher Family
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Annual Consumption of Alcohol
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The Drunkards Progress
From the first glass to the grave, 1846
What social problems were attributed to alcohol?
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NEAL DOW

• Father of Prohibition
• MAINE LAW, 1851
• First U.S. Law to ban the manufacture and sale of
  alcohol.
• Temperance is the most widely supported, least
  sectional and most successful of all the reform
  movements
• What groups will be most resistant?

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Horace Mann (1796-1859)
Father of American Education

• Children were clay in the hands of
  teachers and school officials

• Children should be molded into a state
  of perfection

• Discouraged corporal punishment

• Established state teacher- training schools
  (normal schools)

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Educational Reform
Religious Training Secular Education

• More people have right to vote, so more need for
  education
• Also, many immigrants to be Americanized!
• MA 1st state to establish free public education
  tax supported
• However, many communities unwilling to tax to
  raise the needed
• Lots of private, religious schools - did not want
  to pay taxes to support public ones
• By 1850 free public ed. in most of North even
  some high schools
• Better teacher training
• Mostly women as teachers CATHERINE BEECHER
  didnt have to pay them as much as men

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The McGuffey Eclectic Readers
Used religious parables to teach American
values.
Teach middle class morality and respect for order.
Teach 3 Rs Protestant ethic (frugality,
hard work, sobriety)
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Noah Webster

• American Spelling Book
• Encouraged Americans to respect their own
  literature
• Later, dictionaries

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Dorothea Dix
Penitentiary Reform

• Prisons are an American creation
• Reformers hope to help prisoners repent learn
  to lead normal lives, reflect on sins, become
  better citizens
• Horrid conditions existed sane insane together
• DOROTHEA DIX gets prison reforms gets insane
  out of prisons mental asylums established
• Will be appointed as Superintendent of Nurses for
  Union forces in Civil War

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Dorothea Dix Asylum - 1849
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Two Types of Prisons Develop

• Auburn System
• First in 1821, Auburn, NY
• Congregate system
• Congregate work by day BUT in total silence
• Solitary at night

• Pennsylvania System
• Individual system
• Isolates inmate for entire stay
• Blindfolded on admittance, etc.
• Overcrowding a problem

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Early 19th Century Women Rights?

• Unable to vote
• Legal status of a minor.
• Single ? could own her own property.
• Married ? no control over her property or her
  children.
• Could not initiate divorce.
• Couldnt make wills, sign a contract, or bring
  suit in court without her husbands permission.

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Separate Spheres the Cult of Domesticity

• Separate spheres men off to work to support
  family, womans place is in the home
• to be a refuge from the cruel world outside
• Her role was to civilize her husband and family
  had great moral power.
• Seen as physically/emotionally weak.but also as
  artistic and refined.
• Popularized in newspapers, magazines, etc.

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What It Would Be Like If Ladies Had Their Own Way!
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Cult of Domesticity Slavery
The 2nd Great Awakening inspired women to improve
society many began with abolitionism!
Lucy Stone
American Womens Suffrage Assoc.
Angelina Sarah Grimke
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Womens Rights
1840 ? split in the abolitionist movement
over womens role in it. London ? World
Anti-Slavery Convention
Susan B. Anthony
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Lucretia Mott, a Quaker
1848 ? Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments
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Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
What did the Declaration of Sentiments call
for? Who attended?
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ArtisticAchievements
Gilbert Stuart, an AMERICAN painter
Landsdowne Portrait George Washington, 1796
Portrait of George Washington, 1796
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Charles Wilson PealePortraits of Washington
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ROMANTICISM IN ART AND LITERATURE

• Hudson River School of Art
• Romantic, grandiose AMERICAN landscapes
• Thomas Cole, The Oxbow - 1836

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Transcendentalism

• Individualism in religion!
• Man can be liberated from understanding and the
  cultivation of reasoning.
• TRUTH TRANSCENDS THE SENSES!
• Man can transcend the limits of intellect and
  allow the emotions, the SOUL, to create an
  original relationship with the divine.

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Transcendentalists believed in the
interconnectedness of all living things. NATURE

• We should live close to nature, for it is our
  greatest teacher.
• People are at their best when they are
  self-reliant and independent.
• Society and social institutions such as organized
  religion and political parties corrupt the purity
  of individuals.
• God is everywhere and in everything, so there is
  no need for specific religions or churches.
• Man is divine Since Nature is divine, and we are
  literally creatures of Nature, we are also
  divine. Therefore, we have a direct relationship
  with God. In a sense, we are God or particles of
  God.
• The vast majority of transcendentalists were
  nonconformists and eccentrics

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Transcendentalist Leaders Intellectuals/WritersCo
ncord, MA
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Essay on Civil Disobedience(1849)
Nature(1832)
Self-Reliance (1841)
Walden(1854)
The American Scholar (1837)
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The Transcendentalist Agenda

• Give freedom to the slave
• Give well-being to the poor and the miserable.
• Give learning to the ignorant.
• Give peace and justice to society.

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A Transcendentalist CriticNathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
-Their pursuit of the ideal led to a distorted
view of humannature and possibilities The
Blithedale Romance
-One should accept the world as an imperfect
place Scarlet Letter House of the
Seven Gables
Hawthorne also held minor political offices under
Van Buren, Polk, Pierce
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Overview of Period Authors

• James Fennimore Cooper
• American themes
• Leatherstocking Tales
• Walt Whitman
• Rambling, free-verse poetry
• Leaves of Grass
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Evolved the essay
• Henry David Thoreau
• Activity in nature
• Walden

• Pessimists - a dark view of human nature
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Short story
• Terror, darkness
• The Raven
• Herman Melville
• Human psychology struggles
• Moby Dick
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Also focused on human struggles
• Fascination with New England Puritans
• The Scarlett Letter

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The End of the Age of Reform?

• Caused by westward territorial expansion which
  brings what issue to the forefront and takes over
  politics?
• SLAVERY!