Title: Antebellum Reform Movements
1AntebellumRevivalismReform
BY Susan M. PojerPamela K. Montague
2The 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
3The Second Great Awakening
Spiritual Reform From WithinReligious
Revivalism
Social Reforms Redefining the Ideal of Equality
Education
Temperance
Abolitionism
Asylum Penal Reform
Womens Rights
4The Pursuit of Perfection In Antebellum
America
How did the transportation revolution and the
market revolution lead to this desire?
5The Benevolent Empire1825 - 1846
Where did the movement begin?
6The Burned-Over Districtin Upstate New York
Many NE Puritans had settled there
7Second Great AwakeningRevival Meeting
Spread to the masses on the frontier by multi-day
camp meetings
8Charles 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
9The 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)
10Violence Against Mormons
Why were the Mormons persecuted?
11The Mormon Trek
Why Utah?
12The Mormons(The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints)
- Deseret community
- Salt Lake City, Utah
- Frontier theocracy
- Later flouted what laws in UT?
Brigham Young(1801-1877)
13Temperance Movement
1826 - American Temperance SocietyDemon Rum!
Frances Willard
Lyman Beecher the Beecher Family
14Annual Consumption of Alcohol
15The Drunkards Progress
From the first glass to the grave, 1846
What social problems were attributed to alcohol?
16NEAL 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?
17Early 19th Century Women Rights?
- Unable to vote.
- Legal status of a minor.
- Single ? could own her own property.
- Married ? no control over herproperty or her
children. - Could not initiate divorce.
- Couldnt make wills, sign a contract, or bring
suit in court without her husbands permission.
18Separate Spheres Concept
Cult of Domesticity
- A womans sphere was in the home (to be
arefuge 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. - Republican Motherhood idea still alive.
The power of woman is her dependence. A woman
who gives up that dependence on man to become a
reformer yields the power God has given her for
her protection, and her character becomes
unnatural!
19What It Would Be Like If Ladies Had Their Own Way!
20Cult of Domesticity Slavery
The 2nd Great Awakening inspired women to improve
society many began with abolitionism.
Lucy Stone
Angelina Sarah Grimke
- American WomensSuffrage Assoc.
- edited Womans Journal
R2-9
21Womens 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
22Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
What did the Declaration of Sentiments call
for? Who attended?
23Educational 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
24Horace 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)
25NoahWebster
- American Spelling Book
- Encouraged Americans to respect their own
literature - Later, dictionaries
26The 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)
27Women Educators
- Troy, NY Female Seminary
- Curriculum math, physics, history,
geography. - train female teachers
Emma Willard(1787-1870)
- 1837 - she established Mt. Holyoke So.
Hadley, MA as the first college for women.
Mary Lyons(1797-1849)
28 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
Dorothea Dix (1802-1887)
29Dorothea Dix Asylum - 1849
30Two 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
31Utopian Communities
32Robert 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.
33Original 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.
34New Harmony, IN
First American kindergarten and free public school
35George Ripley (1802-1880)
BROOK FARMWest Roxbury, MA 1841
Plain Living High Thinking Transcendentalists
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a resident eventually it
burns down
36The 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
37The 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
38Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)
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.
- Remember the cries of those who are in need and
trouble, that when you are in trouble, God may
hear your cries.
- 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
39Shaker Meeting
Religious fervor is sign of inspiration from God!
40Shaker Beliefs
- Men / women equal spiritually
- Celibacy
- So how did they survive so long?
- Longest lasting sect until 1940.
Shaker Hymn
'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.
41Shaker Simplicity Utility
42ArtisticAchievements
Gilbert Stuart, an AMERICAN painter
Landsdowne Portrait George Washington, 1796
Portrait of George Washington, 1796
43Charles Wilson Peale
44ROMANTICISM IN ART AND LITERATURE
- Hudson River School Romantic, grandiose
AMERICAN landscapes - Thomas Cole, The Oxbow - 1836
45Transcendentalism (European Romanticism)
- Liberation from understanding and the cultivation
of reasoning. - Truth transcends the senses.
- Transcend the limits of intellect and allow the
emotions, the SOUL, to create an original
relationship with the Universe man is divine. - Individualism in religion!
46Transcendentalist Thinking
- Commitment to self-reliance, self-culture,
self-discipline. - They instinctively rejected all secular authority
and the authority of organized churches and the
Scriptures, of law, or any conventional wisdom - The role of the reformer was to restore man to
the divinity God had given them. - So. man cant be held in slavery or have his
mind corrupted by superstition or ignorance!
47Transcendentalist Intellectuals/WritersConcord,
MA
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Nature(1832)
Essay on Civil Disobedience(1849)
Self-Reliance (1841)
Walden(1854)
The American Scholar (1837)
48The Transcendentalist Agenda
- Give freedom to the slave.
- Give well-being to the poor and the miserable.
- Give learning to the ignorant.
- Give health to the sick.
- Give peace and justice to society.
49A 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
50Overview of Period Authors
- James Fenimore Cooper
- American themes
- Last of the Mohicans
- 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
51The End of the Age of Reform?
- Caused by westward territorial expansion which
brings what issue to the forefront and takes over
politics? - SLAVERY!