The Second Great Awakening

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The Second Great Awakening Antebellum Reform
Movements

• HIS 103

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Threats to Protestantism

• Elites abandoned orthodox Christianity
• Most Founding Fathers were Enlightenment Deists
• Believed in creator God
• Rejected divinity of Jesus miracles
• Believed mans reason could figure everything out
• Unitarians split Congregational establishment in
  New England
• Took control of Harvard wealthiest urban
  churches
• Est. American Unitarian Association in 1826
• Catholic Lutheran immigrants practiced
  different forms of Christianity
• Transcendentalism emphasized individualism
  emotion/intuition over reason
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau (Walden, Civil Disobedience)

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Colonial Protestant Establishment Unable to Meet
Changing Conditions

• Insistence on educated clergy worked against
  needs of the frontier communities
• Clergy tended to have middle-class disdain for
  uncouth frontier life
• Calvinist theology too complex restrictive for
  uneducated poor people
• Disestablishment 1st Amendment created
  competition among denominations
• Only by using non-seminary-trained ministers
  could demand be supplied
• 1775 1,800 ministers (11,500)
• 1845 40,000 ministers (1500)
• Revivalists used democratic rhetoric to attack
  aristocratic religious elites

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Second Great Awakening Methodists

• Methodism came over to America after successfully
  transforming Great Britain in the late 1700s
• John Charles Wesley began reform movement
  within the Anglican Church later became
  Methodist Episcopal Church
• Francis Asbury was 1st Methodist Bishop in the
  U.S.
• Peter Cartwright was leading circuit rider
• preached salvation as a free gift to all
• Set up Sunday Schools bible studies

John Wesley
Francis Asbury
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The Spread of Methodism
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Methodist Camp Meeting
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Second Great AwakeningBaptists

• Baptists also spread rapidly
• Rejected Calvinist roots
• John Leland combined Jeffersonian democracy with
  Christian morality
• Both groups used popular mass culture
• Took advantage of cheap printing to produce
  Bibles, tracts, Sunday School curricula, etc.
• Took popular songs and wrote new lyrics
• Created interdenominational organizations
• American Bible Society
• American Sunday School Union
• American Tract Society

Leland Cheese Monument Cheshire, Mass.
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Challenging Race Gender Conventions

• Initially preached racial gender equality
• Women blacks allowed to preach
• Later backed off due to concern for
  respectability
• Richard Allen founded Bethel African Methodist
  Episcopal Church (A.M.E.) after whites tried to
  segregate St. Georges Methodist Church in
  Philadelphia

Richard Allen
Mother Bethel AME Church
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Revival Preaching
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Congregationalists Presbyterians

• Presbyterians Congregationalists adopted
  methods by 1830s-40s, bringing revival to
  Northeast
• Lyman Beecher traveled around preaching
  conversion
• Charles G. Finney developed system for revival,
  deliberately playing on emotions
• Converted 100,000 people in Rochester, NY in 1839

Charles G. Finney
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Come-Outer SectsMormons

• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
  (Mormons)
• Joseph Smith, Jr. saw angel Moroni found in
  gold tablets in 1823
• Book of Mormon published in 1830
• Established utopian communities
• Kirtland, OH 1831-38
• Nauvoo, IL 1839-45
• Hierarchical, male-dominated church
• Polygamy encouraged
• Smith killed by mob in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1844
• Brigham Young led migration to Deseret (Utah) in
  1846-48

Joseph Smith, Jr.
Brigham Young
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Hill Cumorah, Palmyra, NY
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Reconstructed TempleNauvoo, Illinois
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Mormon TempleSalt Lake City, Utah
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Come-Outer SectsShakers

• United Society of Believers in Christs Second
  Appearing (Shakers) started in England in 1747
• Mother Ann Lee Stanley claimed to be 2nd, female
  incarnation of Jesus Christ
• Came to America with 8 disciples in 1774
• Established 19 communities between 1783-1836
• 4,000 5,000 members at peak
• Lived communally practiced celibacy
• Danced experienced ecstasies in worship
• Embraced modern technology

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Shaker Dance
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Round Barn (1826)Hancock Shaker Village
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Mill Powered by Water TurbineHancock Shaker
Village
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Weave ShopHancock Shaker Village
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Elders BedroomHancock Shaker Village
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Oneida Community

• Oneida Community founded by John Humphrey Noyes
  in 1848
• Noyes had been converted by Finney, but became an
  antinomian
• Complex marriage came to be eugenic breeding
  program
• Noyes fled to Canada in 1879 to avoid adultery
  charge
• Community became a joint-stock company in 1881

John Humphrey Noyes
Oneida Community Mansion
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Antebellum Reform Movements Abolition

• American Colonization Society (1817) favored
  gradual, compensated manumission returning
  freed blacks to Africa
• Liberia founded in 1821
• 6,000 immigrants, 1817-67
• American Antislavery Society (1833) demanded
  immediate, uncompensated emancipation black
  citizenship
• William Lloyd Garrison began publishing The
  Liberator in 1831
• Frederick Douglass was escaped slave who became
  eloquent spokesman

William Lloyd Garrison
Frederick Douglass
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Antebellum Reform Movements Temperance

• Temperance movement combated widespread evils of
  alcholism
• American Temperance Society Washington
  Temperance Society led voluntary individual
  reform efforts
• Parades featured water wagons
• Teetotalers pledged total abstinence
• Per capita consumption drastically reduced by
  1850
• Neal Dow got 13 states to pass Maine laws,
  1851-55
• Prohibited manufacture sale of intoxicating
  liquor
• Did not apply to beer, wine or cider

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Antebellum Reform MovementsWomens Rights

• Womens Rights movement grew out of other reform
  movements
• Many, like Susan B. Anthony, were Quakers
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton began as temperance
  advocate abolitionist
• Seneca Falls Convention (1848) issued Womens
  Declaration of Independence

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Antebellum Reform Movements Penitentiaries
Asylums

• Criminals, poor, etc. seen as result of societal
  failure
• Penitentiaries designed to remove criminals from
  corrupting influences provide discipline
  through labor
• Auburn (1819-23)
• Ossining (1825)
• Asylums isolated patients from outside influences
  in order to cure them
• Mental illness viewed as result of stress
• Asylums were utopias

Dorothea Dix