REFORM AND CULTURE: 1790-1860
The Second Great Awakening
A. Fostered spin-off reform movements: prisons, education, asylums,
temperance, women's movement, and abolition.
B. Methodists and Baptists benefitted most from revivalism.
a. Both sects stressed personal conversion.
C. Denominational Diversity.
1. "Burned-Over District: Western NY, many New England Puritans had settled
there and the region became known for its "hellfire and damnation"
sermons.
2. Wealthier, better-educated levels of society not as affected by revivalism -Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians.
3. Less prosperous, less "learned" communities in the rural South and West
most affected by revivalism -- Methodists, Baptists, and other sects.
4. Slavery issue split Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians along sectional
lines.
D. Mormons
1. Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
(Mormons) in 1830 – founded in "Burned-Over District."
2. Mormons persecuted in Ohio, then Missouri and Illinois.
3. Communitarian movement - cooperative nature of sect offended
individualistic Americans.
4. Accusations of polygamy.
5. 1844, Joseph Smith and his brother murdered by mob in Illinois.
6. Brigham Young leads Mormons to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1846-47.
Immigration
A. Irish (Potato Famine) and Germans (failed political reforms) flood into the U.S.
during the 1840s.
B. This will provide the workforce for the true industrial revolution in America.
C. Americans are threatened by this mass migration. Nativist or Anti-foreign
sentiments develop. A reaction to:
 Foreignness (of language and custom).
 Catholicism (Popery).
 Poverty and willingness to work for low wages.
Age of Reform
A. Key driving forces behind the reform movements of the 1800s – Religion
(Evangelical in nature) and Women.
B. Make-up of reformers – white, middle class, Protestants.
C. Although most reformers do incredible good and have the best intentions –
there are hints of cultural superiority in the basic assumption of a reformer and
who they target for reform.
 Immigrants and urban poor.
D. Drawbacks of reform movement – many are put-off by the aggressive morality
of reformers.
E. Major reform issues:
1. Abolition of slavery.
2. Temperance.
3. Women’s rights.
4. Education reform.
5. Improved conditions for the mentally ill.
6. Prison reform -- Push for reform rather than punishment.
Reform: Women's Rights
A. Sexual differences increasingly emphasized in 19th c. America as a result of
Industrial Revolution.
1. Changing market separated men and women into distinct economic roles.
2. Women seen as physically and emotionally weak, artistic.
3. Women seen as keepers of society's conscience with special responsibility
to teach children how to be good and productive citizens.
4. "Cult of domesticity" glorified traditional function of the homemaker.
B. Female reformers advocated suffrage and increased rights for women.
1. Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony.
C. Seneca Falls Convention (1848).
1. Organized by Stanton and Mott.
2. "Declaration of Sentiments": "...all men and women are created equal."
3. Demanded women’s' suffrage, launched the modern woman's rights
movement.
Reform: Abolition
A. Abolitionism begins in the 1830s (gradual vs. immediate.)
B. Within movement, debate on nature of emancipation and timeframe.
C. American Colonization Society formed (1816) to emancipate blacks and settle
them in Africa.
D. William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, demanded immediate abolition.
Reform: Temperance – the Crusade against alcohol
A. American Temperance Society (1826).
B. Moderation, abstinence, then prohibition of alcohol.
C. Neal S. Dow "Father of Prohibition" sponsored Maine Law of 1851 prohibiting
the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor.
Reform: Education & Institutional reform
A. Public Education.
1. Tax-supported public education triumphed between 1825 and 1850.
B. Education--compulsory education in every state by 1860.
C. Higher Education.
1. Creation of many small, denominational, liberal arts colleges.
D. Humane Treatment of Individuals.
1. Dorothea Dix investigated and reported treatment of insane and led to
creation of humane institutions.
2. Legal code reforms.
3. Reduction in crimes punishable by death.
4. Abolishing of public hangings in many states.
5. Abandoning flogging and other cruel punishments.
E. Prison reform.
Utopian Communities
A. Utopian societies created in reaction to urban growth and industrialization.
B. Emphasis on cooperation, communal living, the community over the individual,
and withdrawal from society.
C. Oneida Colony founded in NY in 1848.
1. Practiced free love, birth control, and eugenic selection to produce superior
offspring.
2. Communal care of children.
3. Equality of genders.
D. Shakers.
1. Established in Lebanon, New York.
2. Believed in total celibacy, equal spiritual value of men and women, and
simplicity of architecture and furnishings.
3. New members were adopted as orphans or recruited through conversion.
Transcendentalism
A. New England.
B. Philosophy.
1. Every person possesses an inner light that can illuminate the highest truth
and put him/her in direct touch with God, or the "Oversoul."
2. Individualism in matters of religion as well as social.
3. Commitment to self-reliance, self-culture, and self-discipline.
C. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862.)
1. Essay on Civil Disobedience.
2. Refused to pay taxes to support the Mexican war effort.
3. Walden, commentary on the spiritual cost of the market revolution.