THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION

1
THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION

• America Past and Present
• Chapter 12

2
The Rise of Evangelicalism

• Separation of church and state gives all churches
  the chance to compete for converts
• Pious Protestants form voluntary associations to
  combat sin, infidelity

3
The Second Great Awakening The Frontier Phase

• Camp meetings contribute to frontier life
• provide emotional religion
• offer opportunity for social life
• Camp meeting revivals convey intensely personal
  religious message
• Camp meetings rarely lead to social reform

4
The Second Great Awakening in the North

• In New England reformers defend Calvinism against
  the Enlightenment
• Charles G. Finney rejects Calvinism to preach
  free will
• Finney preaches in upstate New York
• Finney stresses revival techniques
• Revivals lead to organization of more churches

5
From Revivalism to Reform

• Northern revivals stimulate reform
• Middle-class participants adapt evangelical
  religion to preserve traditional values
• "The benevolent empire" of evangelical reform
  movements alter American life
• e.g. temperance movement cuts alcohol consumption
  by more than fifty percent

6
Domesticity and Changes in the American Family

• New conception of familys role in society
• Child rearing seen as essential preparation for
  self-disciplined Christian life
• Women confined to domestic sphere
• Women assume crucial role within home

7
Marriage for Love

• Mutual love must characterize marriage
• Wives became more of a companion to their
  husbands and less of a servant
• Legally, the husband was the unchallenged head of
  the household

8
The Cult of Domesticity

• "The Cult of True Womanhood"
• places women in the home
• glorifies home as center of all efforts to
  civilize and Christianize society
• Middle- and upper-class women increasingly
  dedicated to the home as mothers
• Women of leisure enter reform movements

9
The Discovery of Childhood

• Nineteenth-century child the center of family
• Each child seen as unique, irreplaceable
• Ideal to form childs character with affection
• Parental discipline to instill guilt, not fear
• Train child to learn self-discipline

10
Institutional Reform

• Domesticity to inform public institutions
• Schools continue what family begins
• Asylums, prisons mend familys failures

11
The Extension of Education

• Public schools expand rapidly 1820-1850
• Working class sees as means to advance
• Middle-class reformers see as means for
  inculcating values of hard work, responsibility
• Horace Mann argues schools save immigrants, poor
  children from parents bad influence
• Many parents believe public schools alienate
  children from their parents

12
Discovering the Asylum

• Poor, criminal, insane seen as lacking
  self-discipline
• Harsh measures to promote rehabilitation
• solitary confinement of prisoners
• strict daily schedule
• Public support for rehabilitation skimpy
• Prisons, asylums, poorhouses become warehouses
  for the unwanted

13
Reform Turns Radical

• Most reform aims to improve society
• Some radical reformers seek destruction of old
  society, creation of perfect social order

14
Divisions in the Benevolent Empire

• Radical perfectionists impatient by 1830s, split
  from moderate reform
• temperance movement
• peace movement
• antislavery movement
• Moderates seek gradual end to slavery
• Radicals demand immediate emancipation
• 1833--American Anti-Slavery Society

15
The Abolitionist Enterprise Theodore Dwight
Weld

• Weld an itinerant minister converted by Finney
• Adapted his revivalist techniques to abolition
• Successful mass meetings in Ohio, New York

16
The Abolitionist Enterprise Public Reception

• Appeal to hard-working small town folk
• Opposition in cities near Mason-Dixon line
• Opposition from the working class
• dislike blacks
• fear black economic and social competition
• Solid citizens see abolitionists as anarchists

17
The Abolitionist Enterprise Obstacles

• Abolitionists hampered by in-fighting
• William Lloyd Garrison disrupts movement by
  associating with radical reform efforts
• urged abolitionists to abstain from participating
  in the political process
• also got involved in womens rights movement
• Some abolitionists help form the Liberty Party in
  1840

18
Black Abolitionists

• Former slaves related the horrible realities of
  bondage
• prominent figures included Frederick Douglass and
  Sojourner Truth
• Black newspapers, books, and pamphlets publicized
  abolitionism to a wider audience
• Blacks were also active in the Underground
  Railroad

19
From Abolitionism to Women's Rights

• Abolitionism open to womens participation
• Involvement raises awareness of womens
  inequality
• Seneca Falls Convention in 1848
• Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organize
• prompted by experience of inequality in abolition
  movement
• begins movement for womens rights

20
Radical Ideas Experiments Utopian Communities

• Utopian socialism
• Inspired by Robert Owen, Charles Fourier
• New Harmony, IndianaOwenite
• Fourierite phalanxes
• Religious utopianism
• Shakers
• Oneida Community

21
Utopian Communities Before the Civil War
22
Radical Ideas Experiments Transcendentalism

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Margaret Fuller
• George Ripley
• founded cooperative community at Brook Farm
• Henry David Thoreau

23
Counterpoint on Reform

• Reform encounters perceptive critics
• Nathaniel Hawthorne allegorically refuted
  perfectionist movements
• Reform prompts necessary changes in American life