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“Reform movements in the United
States sought to expand
democratic ideals.” Assess
(evaluate, judge or appraise) the
validity (strength or soundness) of
this statement with specific
reference to the years 1825 to
1850.

“The Pursuit
of Perfection”
In
Antebellum
America
1820 to 1860

The Second Great Awakening
“Spiritual Reform From Within”
[Religious Revivalism]
Social Reforms & Redefining the Ideal
of Equality
Temperance
Asylum &
Penal Reform
Education
Women’s
Rights
Abolitionism

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
The Rise of Popular Religion

Purifying the
Nation
•Age of Reform 1820 to
1860
•Ante-Belleum or
before the Civil War
•Romantic Age
•2nd Great Awakening
•Reformers pointed
out the inequality in
society stating the
DOI as the basis of
their argument…
•Rise of Unitarians
who believed a God
of love instead of the
Puritan concept of
an angry God.
•Unitarians believed one
could show the love of
God by helping others….
•Developed a “social
conscience” for
improving the quality of
life in society
•Reformers questioned
the value of material
progress in an age of
industrialization if it
were not accompanied
by progress in solving
the important human
problems
•Primarily a Northern
movement
•Southerners resisted
reform movements
because it feared
abolition of slavery
•Reformers sought to purify the nation by
removing sins of slavery, intemperance
(alcohol), male domination and war…..
•Some removed themselves from society
and tried to create Utopian societies based
on collective ownership
(socialism/communism)
•Reformers used education, lyceum
meetings, newspapers in
inform public of their
issues…..

1. Ante-Belleum—1820 to 1860
• Romantic age
• Reformers pointed the inequality in society
• Industrialization vs. progress in human rights
• Primarily a Northern movement
• Southerner’s refused reforms to protect slavery.
• Educated society through
• newspaper and lyceum meetings
• Areas to reform:
• Slavery women’s rights
• Industrialization public school
• Male domination temperance (alcohol)
• War prison reform

2. 2nd Great Awakening---1820’s to 1840’s
•religious revival vs. deists
•Rise of Unitarians---believed in a God of love
•Denied the trinity
•heaven through good works and helping others.
•Social conscience = social gospel
•apply Christ’s teachings to bettering society
•Contrasted with salvation by grace and getting to
heaven through Christ.
• Baptists, Methodists, etc.
3. Formed utopian societies = collective ownership.

Temperance Movement
• The most significant reform movements of
the period sought not to withdraw from
society but to change it directly
• Temperance Movement — undertook to
eliminate social problems by curbing
drinking
– Led largely by clergy, the movement at first
focused on drunkenness and did not oppose
moderate drinking
– In 1826 the American Temperance Society was
founded, taking voluntary abstinence as its
goal.

•Anti-Alcohol movement
•American Temperance Society formed at Boston-----1826
• sign pledges, pamphlets, anti-alcohol tract
10 nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There
•Demon Drink adopt 2 major line attack
•stressed temperance and individual will to resist
•Lyman Beecher
•Neal Dow
•Lucretia Mott

The Temperance
Movement
• During the next
decade
approximately 5000
local temperance
societies were
founded
• As the movement
gained momentum,
annual per capita
consumption of
alcohol dropped
sharply

From the first glass to the grave, 1846
The Drunkard’s Progress

Middle-class reformers called for
tax-supported education,
arguing to business leaders that
the new economic order needed
educated workers
Educational Reform
In 1800 Massachusetts
was the only state
requiring free public
schools supported by
community funds

The Asylum Movement
(orphanages, jails, hospitals)
• Asylums isolated and
separated the criminal,
the insane, the ill, and
the dependent from
outside society
• “Rehabilitation”
– The goal of care in
asylums, which had
focused on confinement,
shifted to the reform of
personal character

The Asylum
Movement
• Dorothea Dix, a Boston
schoolteacher, took the lead
in advocating state supported asylums
for the mentally ill
• She attracted much attention to the
movement by her report detailing the
horrors to which the mentally ill were
subjected
– being chained, kept in cages and closets,
and beaten with rods
• In response to her efforts, 28 states
maintained mental institutions by 1860

Abolitionist Movement
 1816 --> American Colonization Society
created (gradual, voluntary
emancipation.
British Colonization Society symbol

Abolitionist Movement
 Create a free slave state in Liberia, West
Africa.
 No real anti-slavery sentiment in the North
in the 1820s & 1830s.
Gradualists Immediatists

Abolitionism
• William Lloyd Garrison,
publisher of the The
Liberator, first appeared in
1831 and sent shock waves
across the entire country
– He repudiated gradual
emancipation and embraced
immediate end to slavery at
once
– He advocated racial equality
and argued that slaveholders
should not be compensated for
freeing slaves.

The Liberator
Premiere issue  January 1, 1831

Abolitionism
• Free blacks, such as Frederick
Douglass, who had escaped from
slavery in Maryland, also joined the
abolitionist movement
• To abolitionists, slavery was a moral,
not an economic question
• But most of all, abolitionists
denounced slavery as contrary to
Christian teaching
• 1845 --> The Narrative of the Life
Of Frederick Douglass
• 1847 --> “The North Star”

The Tree of Slavery—Loaded
with the Sum of All Villanies!

Black Abolitionists
David Walker
(1785-1830)
1829 --> Appeal to the Colored
Citizens of the World
Fight for freedom rather than
wait to be set free by whites.

Sojourner Truth (1787-
1883)
or Isabella Baumfree
1850 --> The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
R2-10

The Underground Railroad
 “Conductor” ==== leader of the escape
 “Passengers” ==== escaping slaves
 “Tracks” ==== routes
 “Trains” ==== farm wagons transporting
the escaping slaves
 “Depots” ==== safe houses to rest/sleep

•Gag rule was
passed in Congress
which nothing
concerning slavery
could be discussed.
•Under the gag rule,
anti-slavery
petitions were not
read on the floor of
Congress
•The rule was
renewed in each
Congress between
1837 and 1839.
•In 1840 the House
passed an even
stricter rule, which
refused to accept all
anti-slavery petition.
On December 3,
1844, the gag rule
was repealed

Abolitionism:
Division and Opposition
Abolitionism forced the churches to face the
question of slavery head-on, and in the 1840s
the Methodist and Baptist churches each split
into northern and southern organizations over
the issue of slavery
Even the abolitionists themselves splintered
More conservative reformers wanted to work
within established institutions, using churches
and political action to end slavery

The
“Virtuous
Republic” or
moral
excellence
1. Govt. gets its authority
from the citizens.
2. A selfless, educated
citizenry.
3. Elections should be
frequent.
4. Govt. should guarantee
individual rights &
freedoms.
5. Govt.’s power should be
limited [checks & balances].
6. The need for a written
Constitution.
7. “E Pluribus Unum.” [“Out of
many, one”]
8. An important role for
women  raise good,
virtuous citizens.
[“Republican Womanhood”].
Roman statesman regarded as a model of
simple virtue; he twice was called to
assume dictatorship of Rome and each time
retired to his farm (519-438 BC)

Early 19c Women
1. Unable to vote.
2. Legal status of a minor.
3. Single --> could own her own
property.
4. Married --> no control over her
property or her children.
5. Could not initiate divorce.
6. Couldn’t make wills, sign a
contract, or bring suit in court
without her husband’s permission.

“Separate Spheres” Concept
Republican Motherhood evolved
into the “Cult of Domesticity”
 A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a
refuge from the cruel world outside).
 Her role was to “civilize” her husband and
family.
 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!

Cult of Domesticity = Slavery
The 2nd Great Awakening inspired women
to improve society.
Angelina Grimké Sarah Grimké
 Southern Abolitionists
Lucy Stone
 American Women’s
Suffrage Assoc.
 edited Woman’s Journal
R2-9

 A shift from goods made by hand to
factory and mass production
 Technological innovations brought
production from farmhouse to factories
Invented in Britain in 1750; smuggled to U.S.
Beginning of US Factory System
 US slow to embrace factory system
Scarce labor
Little capital
Superiority of British factories

•Built first textile mill in 1793 in
Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
•Born in England on June 9, 1768
and worked in British factories.
•Slater came to US to make his
fortune in the textile industry.
•Slatersville Mill was the largest and
most modern industrial cotton mill
of its day
Samuel Slater was
the "Father of the
American Factory
System."

The Lowell Mills
 Americans beat the British at their
own game, made better factories
 Francis C Lowell (a British
“traitor”) came over here to build
British factories met up with
Boston mechanic, Paul Moody
Together they improved the mill and
invented a power loom that revolutionized
textile manufacturing

The Lowell System
Lowell, Massachusetts, 1832
 Young New England farm girls (factory
girls)
 Supervised on and off the job
 Worked 6 days a week, 13 hours a day
 Escorted to church on Sunday

Women & the Economy
 1850: 10% of white women working for
pay outside home
Vast majority of working women were single
Left paying jobs upon marriage
 “Cult of domesticity”
Cultural idea that glorifies homemaker
 Empowers married women
Increased power & independence of women in
home led to decline in family size

Workers & Wage Slaves
 With industrial revolution, large
impersonal factories surrounded by
slums full of “wage slaves”
developed
 Long hours, low wages, unsanitary
conditions, lack of heat, etc.
Labor unions illegal
 1820: 1/2 of industrial workers
were children under 10

Workers & Wage Slaves
 1820s & 1830s: right to vote for laborers
Loyalty to Democratic party led to improved
conditions
Fought for 10-hour day, higher wages, better
conditions
 1830s & 1840s: Dozens of strikes for
higher wages or 10-hour day
1837 depression hurt union membership
 Commonwealth v. Hunt
Supreme Court ruled unions not illegal conspiracies
as long as they were peaceful

Under Horace Mann’s
leadership in the 1830s,
Massachusetts created a
state board of education
and adopted a minimum-
length school year.
Educational Reform
Provided for training of teachers, and
expanded the curriculum to include
subjects such as history and geography

By the 1850s the number of schools, attendance
figures, and school budgets had all increased
sharply
School reformers enjoyed their greatest success
in the Northeast and the least in the South
Southern planters opposed paying taxes to
educate poorer white children
Educational opportunities for women also
expanded
In 1833 Oberlin College in Ohio became the
first coeducational college.
Four years later the first all-female college was
founded — Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts
Educational Reform

Women Educators
 Troy, NY Female Seminary
 curriculum: math, physics,
history, geography.
 train female teachers
Emma Willard
(1787-1870)
Mary Lyons
(1797-1849)
 1837 --> she established
Mt. Holyoke [So. Hadley, MA]
as the first college for women.

When abolitionists divided over the issue
of female participation, women found it
easy to identify with the situation of the
slaves
1848: Feminist reform led to Seneca Falls
Convention
Significance: launched modern women’s
rights movement
Established the arguments and the
program for the women’s rights movement
for the remainder of the century
Women’s Rights Movement

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

Women’s Rights
1840 --> split in the abolitionist movement
over women’s role in it.
London --> World Anti-Slavery Convention
Lucretia Mott Elizabeth Cady Stanton
1848 --> Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments

The first Woman’s rights
movement was in Seneca Falls,
New York in 1849……
•Educational and professional opportunities
•Property rights
•Legal equality
•repeal of laws awarding the father custody of
the children in divorce.
•Suffrage rights

•The following is an
excerpt from the
Seneca Falls
Declaration written
by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton.
•Notice that the
language and
wording is similar
to the Declaration
of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-
evident that all men and women
are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights governments
are instituted, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the
governed……

The history of mankind is a history
of repeated injuries and usurpations
on the part of man toward woman,
having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny
over her. To prove this, let facts be
submitted to a candid world….
•He has made her, if married, in the
eye of the law, civilly dead.
•He has taken from all right in
property, even to the wages she earns.

He has made her, morally, an
irresponsible being, as she can
commit many crimes with impunity,
provided they be done in the presence
of her husband.
In the covenant of marriage, she is
compelled to promise obedience to
her husband, he becoming, to all
intents and purposes, her master; the
law giving him power to deprive her
of her liberty, and to administer
chastisement.

Susan B. Anthony on
Marriage and Slavery
“The married women and their legal status.
What is servitude? “The condition of a slave.”
What is a slave? “A person who is robbed of
the proceeds of his labor; a person who is
subject to the will of another…”
I submit the deprivation by law of ownership of
one’s own person, wages, property, children,
the denial of right as an individual, to sue and
be sued, to vote, and to testify in the courts, is a
condition of servitude most bitter and absolute,
though under the sacred name of marriage.

Second Great Awakening
• As a result of the Second Great Awakening
(a series of revivals in the 1790s-early
1800s), the dominant form of Christianity in
America became evangelical Protestantism
– Membership in the major Protestant churches—
Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, and
Methodist—soared
– By 1840 an estimated half of the adult
population was connected to some church, with
the Methodists emerging as the largest
denomination in both the North and the South

1816 -> American Bible Society Founded

Revivalism and the Social Order
• Society during the Jacksonian era was
undergoing deep and rapid change
– The revolution in markets brought both
economic expansion and periodic depressions.
• To combat this uncertainty reformers
sought stability and order in religion
– Religion provided a means of social control
in a disordered society
– Churchgoers embraced the values of hard
work, punctuality, and sobriety
– Revivals brought unity and strength
and a sense of peace

Charles Finney
• Charles Finney
conducted his own
revivals in the mid 1820s
and early 1830s
• He rejected the Calvinist
doctrine of predestination
– adopted ideas of free will
and salvation to all
• Really popularized the
new form of revival

Charles Finney and the
Conversion Experience
• New form of revival
– Meeting night after night to build
excitement
– Speaking bluntly
– Praying for sinners by name
– Encouraging women to testify in public
– Placing those struggling with conversion
on the “anxious bench” at the front of the
church

Burned Over District
• Burned over district in Western NY got its
name from a “wild fire of new religions”
– Gave birth to Seventh Day Adventists
• The Millerites believed the 2nd coming of Christ would
occur on October 22, 1843
• Members sold belonging, bought white robes for the
ascension into heaven
• Believers formed new church on October 23rd
• Like 1st, 2nd Awakening widened gaps
between classes and religions

The Rise of African
American Churches
• Revivalism also
spread to the
African American
community
• The Second Great
Awakening has
been called the
"central and
defining event in
the development
of Afro-
Christianity“
• During these revivals Baptists and Methodists converted
large numbers of blacks

The Rise of African
American Churches
• This led to the
formation of all-
black Methodist
and Baptist
churches, primarily
in the North
• African Methodist
Episcopal (A. M. E.)
had over 17,000
members by 1846

Other Churches Founded
• While the Protestant revivals
sought to reform individual
sinners, others sought to remake
society at large
• Mormons – The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints
• Founded by Joseph Smith in
western NY
•In 1827, Smith announced that he had
discovered a set of golden tablets on which
was written the Book of Mormon
•Proclaiming that he had a commission from
God to reestablish the true church, Smith
gathered a group of devoted followers

Mormons
• Mormon culture upheld the middle-class
values of hard work, self-control, and
• He tried to create a City of Zion: Kirkland,
Ohio, Independence, Missouri, then to
Nauvoo, Illinois.
• His unorthodox teachings led to
persecution and mob violence.
• Smith was murdered in 1844 by an anti-
Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois.
• Church in conflict

Mormons
• Brigham Young,
Smith’s successor, led
the Mormons westward
in 1846-1847 to Utah
where they could live
and worship without
interference

Cults
• The Shakers
– Ann Lee – 1774
– The Shakers used dancing as a worship
practice
– Shakers practiced celibacy, separating the
sexes as far as practical
– Shakers worked hard, lived simply (built
furniture), and impressed outsiders with their
cleanliness and order
– Lacking any natural increase, membership
began to decline after 1850, from a peak
of about 6000 members

Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)
 If you will take up your crosses against the works
of generations, and follow Christ in the
regeneration, God will cleanse you from all
unrighteousness.
 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.
The Shakers

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 gained
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Utopian Communities
• The Oneida Community
• Brook Farm
• New Harmony
• Transcendentalists

Secular Utopian
Communities
Individual
Freedom
Demands of
Community Life
 spontaneity
 self-fulfillment
 discipline
 organizational
hierarchy

The Oneida Community
New York, 1848
John Humphrey Noyes
(1811-1886)
 Millenarianism --> 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.”

Brook Farm
West Roxbury, MA
George Ripley (1802-1880)

Robert Owen (1771-1858)
Utopian Socialist
“Village of Cooperation”

Original Plans for New Harmony,
IN
New Harmony in 1832

Transcendentalism
 “Liberation from understanding and
the cultivation of reasoning.”
 “Transcend” the limits of intellect
and allow the emotions, the SOUL,
to create an original relationship
with the Universe.

Transcendentalist
Intellectuals/Writers
Concord, MA
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Henry David
Thoreau
Nature
(1832)
Walden
(1854)
Resistance to Civil
Disobedience
(1849)
Self-Reliance
(1841)
“The American
Scholar” (1837)

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