Chapter 12- The Pursuit of Perfection

Chapter 12: The Pursuit
of Perfection
AP United States History
Week of January 11, 2016
The Rise of
Evangelism
Pictured: Lyman Beecher
•
The United States of the early
1800s underwent an
evangelical revival
•
Background: •
Church and state were fully
separate
•
Deism was in decline,
Catholic immigration was
increasing
•
Spirit of Jacksonian
democratic politics was
present
The Second Great
Awakening on the Frontier
Pictured: Charles Grandison
Finney
•
What exactly was the Second
Great Awakening?
•
Two key elements:
•
A particular dynamic
evangelism that rejected
Calvinism of 1700s
•
•
Calvinists stressed sinful
nature of man, salvation
was only in God’s hands
Featured orchestrated
events (revivals) that
provoked conversions
The Second Great Awakening on the Frontier, Part
II
•
•
Second Great Awakening began in 1801 in Cane Ridge, KY
•
Camp meeting met social and religious needs
•
Were an emotional outlet for rural residents
In the South, church meetings gradually replaced revivals
•
Southern churches grew in membership
•
Encouraged temperance, but conservatism of South
hindered further reform
The Second Great Awakening in the North
•
Reform movement in New England began as a defense of Calvinism
•
•
Rev. Timothy Dwight of Yale preached to undergraduates that they were “dead in sin”
•
His pessimistic Calvinism limited his appeal
•
Nathaniel Taylor, one of his students, stressed that every individual was a free
spirit who could overcome sin
Lyman Beecher was the first “new Calvinism” preacher
•
•
Charles Grandison Finney practiced more radical revivalism
•
•
Promoted revivals in New England churches
More appeal to emotion, stressed unqualified free will
Second Great Awakening in North spurred other social reform movements and moral
reforms
From Revivalism to Reform
The most successful reform crusade was the temperance movement, a campaign
against excessive alcohol consumption
•
Alcohol was a real problem…
•
Whiskey was the most popular beverage, and it was cheap and “safe”
•
Reformers saw alcohol as a threat to morality
•
Spawned vice, threatened family life
•
•
Here, women played a vital role, as it affected home life
Intemperance was also an affront to republican virtues
•
Campaign was effective; alcohol consumption was cut
•
Other areas of reform: missionary and benevolent societies, efforts against gambling
and prostitution
Domesticity and Changes in the American Family
The evangelical culture of the early 1800s also changed family dynamics
•
•
A new ideal of marriage for love arose among the middle class
•
Mutual affection now started to surpass protecting family property
•
This love was reflected in correspondence between spouses
Emergence of a Cult of Domesticity — view that women had a special role in
the domestic sphere
•
Emergence of factories in towns and cities drew men out of the house
•
Domestic ideology opened women to new roles in public sphere
•
•
Like what?
This ideology largely did not affect working-class or poor women
Domesticity and Changes in the American Family,
Part II
The evangelical culture of the early 1800s also changed family dynamics
•
Lyman Beecher’s daughter, Catherine, extended the domestic ideal to teaching
•
•
Wanted to make schoolteaching a woman’s occupation, as the teacher was
equivalent to a mother
Middle-class family also became child-centered
•
Children were spending more time at home and receiving more parental attention
•
Parents became more aware of parenting responsibilities
•
•
Discipline also became less physical and more about withholding of affection
or shaming
Family size shrunk, partly due to increasing use of birth control and more
frequent abortions
Institutional Reforms: Education and Asylums
Two institutions in the United States that were the target of reforms in the 1800s were
schools and prisons
•
•
Reformer Horace Mann established a state board of education in Mass.
•
Conceived of public education as a means to social discipline
•
Unfortunately, public schools alienated working-class children from their families
•
Education reforms also took the form of more lyceums in cities
In 1820s and 1830s, prisons, asylums and poorhouses emerged to house deviants
•
Previously: they wandered, or were jailed, or executed
•
Goal was to reform them, but institutions were often inhumane and overcrowded
•
Dorothea Dix lobbied for reforms, improving conditions of prisons and insane
asylums
More Radical Reform: Abolitionism
A more radical strand of 1800s-era reform surfaced concerning the issue of the
abolition of slavery
•
Previously, abolitionists were associated with the American Colonization Society
•
Goal was to resettle blacks in the colony of Liberia in West Africa
•
Was inadequate, opposed by Northern blacks and some white abolitionists
•
William Lloyd Garrison published The Liberator calling for immediate
emancipation
•
•
Founded the American Anti-Slavery Society
The abolitionist movement largely grew out of the Second Great Awakening
•
Abolitionists encountered fierce, often violent opposition in the South
•
Abolitionists also split over women’s role in the movement
More Radical Reform: Abolitionism, Part II
A more radical strand of 1800s-era reform surfaced
concerning the issue of the abolition of slavery
•
The abolitionist movement depended heavily on the
support of northern blacks
•
Black newspapers, like Frederick Douglass’ North
Star, gave blacks a voice in movement
•
Ex-slaves such as Harriet Tubman participated in the
Underground Railroad, giving slaves a path to freedom
•
South responded with a gag rule in Congress
From Abolition to
Women’s Rights
Women’s participation in the
abolitionist movement was the catalyst
for the women’s rights movement
Pictured: Elizabeth Cady Stanton
•
Women were not allowed to
participate equally in the abolitionist
movement
•
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton were excluded from
speaking at a convention in London
•
They held the Seneca Falls
Convention in 1848 •
Rejected the cult of
domesticity; issued
Declaration of Sentiments
Radical Ideas and Experiments
Two far more radical reform ideas were utopianism and transcendentalism
•
Utopianism: belief that reformed society could be attained by members
withdrawing and forming their own communities
•
•
Robert Owen founded a community in New Harmony, IN
Another reform movement: transcendentalism
•
Main idea: the individual could transcend material reality and attain a oneness
with the universe
•
Ralph Waldo Emerson preached a form of radical individualism
•
•
Henry David Thoreau lived by himself near Walden Pond, and wrote Walden
Rev. George Ripley rejected Emerson, and founded a community in Brook
Farm, MA