Title: Antebellum Reform Movements
1AntebellumRevivalismReform
Jacksonian Reforms
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
Temperance
Education
Abolitionism
Asylum Penal Reform
Womens Rights
Kicks off the Pursuit of Perfection in America!
4Where did the movement begin?
5The Burned-Over DistrictUpstate New York
Many NE Puritans had settled there
6Second Great AwakeningRevival Meeting
Spread to the masses on the frontier by multi-day
camp meetings
7Charles 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!
8The 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)
9Violence Against Mormons
Why were the Mormons persecuted?
10The Mormon Trek
Why Utah?
11The Mormons
- Led by Brigham Young
- Salt Lake City, Utah
- Frontier theocracy
- Later flouted what laws in UT?
Brigham Young(1801-1877)
12Mother 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
13Shaker Meeting
Religious fervor is sign of inspiration from God!
14Shaker 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.
15Shaker Simplicity Utility
16Utopian Communities
17Robert 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.
18Original 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.
19New Harmony, IN
First American kindergarten and free public school
20George Ripley (1802-1880)
BROOK FARMWest Roxbury, MA 1841
Plain Living High Thinking Transcendentalists
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a resident eventually it
burns down.
21The 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
22The 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
23Temperance Movement
1826 - American Temperance SocietyDemon Rum!
Frances Willard
Lyman Beecher the Beecher Family
24Annual Consumption of Alcohol
25The Drunkards Progress
From the first glass to the grave, 1846
What social problems were attributed to alcohol?
26NEAL 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?
27Horace 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)
28Educational 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
29The 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)
30Noah Webster
- American Spelling Book
- Encouraged Americans to respect their own
literature - Later, dictionaries
31Dorothea 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
32Dorothea Dix Asylum - 1849
33Two 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
34Early 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.
35Separate 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.
36What It Would Be Like If Ladies Had Their Own Way!
37Cult 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
38Womens 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
39Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
What did the Declaration of Sentiments call
for? Who attended?
40ArtisticAchievements
Gilbert Stuart, an AMERICAN painter
Landsdowne Portrait George Washington, 1796
Portrait of George Washington, 1796
41Charles Wilson PealePortraits of Washington
42ROMANTICISM IN ART AND LITERATURE
- Hudson River School of Art
- Romantic, grandiose AMERICAN landscapes
- Thomas Cole, The Oxbow - 1836
43Transcendentalism
- 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.
44Transcendentalists 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
45Transcendentalist 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)
46The 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.
47A 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
48Overview 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
49The End of the Age of Reform?
- Caused by westward territorial expansion which
brings what issue to the forefront and takes over
politics? - SLAVERY!