Antebellum Reform Movements

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AntebellumRevivalismReform
BY Susan M. PojerPamela K. Montague
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The 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
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The Second Great Awakening
Spiritual Reform From WithinReligious
Revivalism
Social Reforms Redefining the Ideal of Equality
Education
Temperance
Abolitionism
Asylum Penal Reform
Womens Rights
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The Pursuit of Perfection In Antebellum
America
How did the transportation revolution and the
market revolution lead to this desire?
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The Benevolent Empire1825 - 1846
Where did the movement begin?
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The Burned-Over Districtin Upstate New York
Many NE Puritans had settled there
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Second Great AwakeningRevival Meeting
Spread to the masses on the frontier by multi-day
camp meetings
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Charles 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
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The 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)
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Violence Against Mormons
Why were the Mormons persecuted?
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The Mormon Trek
Why Utah?
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The 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)
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Temperance Movement
1826 - American Temperance SocietyDemon Rum!
Frances Willard
Lyman Beecher the Beecher Family
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Annual Consumption of Alcohol
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The Drunkards Progress
From the first glass to the grave, 1846
What social problems were attributed to alcohol?
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NEAL 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?

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Early 19th Century Women Rights?

1. Unable to vote.
2. Legal status of a minor.
3. Single ? could own her own property.
4. Married ? no control over herproperty or her
   children.
5. Could not initiate divorce.
6. Couldnt make wills, sign a contract, or bring
   suit in court without her husbands permission.

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Separate 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.

• An 1830s MA minister

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!
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What It Would Be Like If Ladies Had Their Own Way!
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Cult 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

• Southern Abolitionists

R2-9
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Womens 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
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Seneca Falls Convention, 1848
What did the Declaration of Sentiments call
for? Who attended?
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Educational 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

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Horace 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)

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NoahWebster

• American Spelling Book
• Encouraged Americans to respect their own
  literature
• Later, dictionaries

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The 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)

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Women 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)
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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)
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Dorothea Dix Asylum - 1849
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Two 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

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Utopian Communities
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Robert 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.
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Original 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.
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New Harmony, IN
First American kindergarten and free public school
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George Ripley (1802-1880)
BROOK FARMWest Roxbury, MA 1841
Plain Living High Thinking Transcendentalists
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a resident eventually it
burns down
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The 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

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The 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
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Mother 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

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Shaker Meeting
Religious fervor is sign of inspiration from God!
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Shaker 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.
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Shaker Simplicity Utility
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ArtisticAchievements
Gilbert Stuart, an AMERICAN painter
Landsdowne Portrait George Washington, 1796
Portrait of George Washington, 1796
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Charles Wilson Peale
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ROMANTICISM IN ART AND LITERATURE

• Hudson River School Romantic, grandiose
  AMERICAN landscapes
• Thomas Cole, The Oxbow - 1836

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Transcendentalism (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!

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Transcendentalist 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!

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Transcendentalist 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)
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The 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.

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A 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
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Overview 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

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The End of the Age of Reform?

• Caused by westward territorial expansion which
  brings what issue to the forefront and takes over
  politics?
• SLAVERY!