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Antebellum Reform Movements

Chapter 15

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 Toqueville e, 1832

The Rise of Popular Religion

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Changing Role of Religion

•  3/4 of Americans attended church regularly in 1850

•  Calvinism declining •  More liberal religious beliefs

– Deism – Unitarianism

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Second Great Awakening

•  Reaction to the liberalization of religion •  Began in southern frontier and then

moved North – Areas of major social and economic

changes – Mills, canals, rapid growth

•  1790s-1830s

“The Benevolent Empire”: 1825 - 1846

The ranges of tents, the fires, reflecting light…; the candles and lamps illuminating the encampment; hundreds moving to and fro…;the preaching, praying, singing, and shouting,… like the sound of many waters, was enough to swallow up all the powers of contemplation.

Charles G. Finney

(1792 – 1895)

“soul-shaking” conversion

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Second Great Awakening Revival Meeting

Characteristics of Revival

•  Very attractive to people on the frontier – Entertaining – Got people away from home – Thousands would attend

•  Women also could attend and participate

The “Burned-Over” District in Upstate New York

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Second Great Awakening Characteristics

•  Emotionalism •  Patriotism •  Promoted female spiritual worth •  Fragmentation of religious

denominations •  Spoke to the middle to working classes

Transcendentalism

e  Liberation from understanding and the cultivation of reasoning.

e Rejected ideas of John Locke that knowledge comes from the senses

e Truth “transcends” the limits of intellect and allows the emotions, the SOUL, to create an original relationship with the universe.

Transcendentalist Thinking §  Every person has an inner light that puts them

in direct touch with God.

§  Man is divine.

§  Individuality over social group conformity in secular and religious matters.

§  Stress on self-reliance and self-discipline.

§  They instinctively rejected all secular authority and the authority of organized churches and the Scriptures, of law, or of conventions

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Transcendentalism

§  Therefore, if man is divine, it would be wicked that he should be held in slavery, or his soul corrupted by superstition, or his mind clouded by ignorance.

§  Thus, the role of the reformer was to restore man to that divinity which God had endowed him..

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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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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Utopian Societies

•  Try to make the perfect society •  Many started in the Burned Over District

Utopian Communities

The Oneida Community New York, 1848

John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886)

e  Millenarianism --> the 2nd coming of Christ had already occurred.

e  Humans were no longer obliged to follow the moral rules of the past.

•  all residents married to each other. •  carefully regulated “free love.”

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Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)

e  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.

e  Remember the cries of those who are in need and trouble, that when you are in trouble, God may hear your cries.

e  If you improve in one talent, God will give you more.

The Shakers

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Shaker Beliefs

•  Devote one’s life to labor •  Absolute chastity

– Second coming of Christ was near – No need to procreate

•  Bodies would shake when worshipping •  God is male and female

Shaker Meeting

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Millerites

•  William Miller tried to mathematically predict the second coming of Christ

•  Became Seventh Day Adventists

The Mormons

(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)

Joseph Smith (1805-1844)

§  1823 à Golden Tablets

§  1830 à Book of Mormon

§  1844 à Murdered in Carthage, IL

Violence Against Mormons

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The Mormon “Trek” • Active missionary work

• Support for Indians.

• Voted as a block

The Mormons

(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)

§  Desert community.

§  Salt Lake City, Utah (1847)

§  Population swelled as immigrants came from Europe

Brigham Young (1801-1877)

Robert Owen (1771-1858)

Utopian Socialist

New Harmony, IN

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Original Plans for New Harmony, IN

New Harmony in 1832

New Harmony, IN

Brook Farm

A center of transcendentalism

George Ripley (1802-1880)

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Antebellum Reform Movements

•  Influenced by Second Great Awakening •  Battle earthly evils

Annual Consumption of Alcohol

Temperance Movement

•  Protest corrosive effects of alcohol •  Early reformers stressed moderation,

not elimination •  Many of the reformers were women

– Will use this experience to go after other reforms and political experience

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“The Drunkard’s Progress”

From the first glass to the grave, 1846

Temperance Movement

Frances Willard The Beecher Family

1826 - American Temperance Society “Demon Rum”!

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American Temperance Society

•  Founded in 1826 and believed in total abstinence.

•  Influenced by Finney revivals •  Reformers usually had 2 strategies

– Moral: help people resist alcohol – Political: eliminate through legislation.

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Political Victories

•  State level success – Maine went dry in 1851 – 16 dry states by Civil War – Many laws declared unconstitutional,

repealed or openly disobeyed

Penitentiary Reform

Dorothea Dix (1802-1887)

1821 à first penitentiary founded in Auburn, NY

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Working Class

•  Formation of trade unions •  Advocation of free, tax-supported

schools •  National Trades Union founded in 1834 •  1834-36: 168 strikes •  Panic of 1837 hurt union movement

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Educational Reform

•  1840: 50% of whites were literate •  1840: 38% of white children were in

public school

Opposition to Public Schools

•  Rich often sent kids to private schools •  Many realized that ignorant citizens

could become dangerous--armed with the vote.

Educational Reform

Religious Training à Secular Education

e  MA à always on the forefront of public educational reform * 1st state to establish tax support for local public schools. e  Compulsory education laws by 1836

e  By 1860 every state offered free public education to whites. * US had one of the highest literacy rates.

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“Father of American Education”

Horace Mann (1796-1859)

e  children were clay in the hands of teachers and school officials

e  children should be “molded” into a state of perfection e  discouraged corporal punishment

e  established state teacher- training programs

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More on Education

•  Manufacturers encouraged education for increased productivity and discipline

•  Blacks in South forbidden to receive an education

•  First state-supported universities – North Carolina in 1795 – Virginia in 1819

The McGuffey Eclectic Readers

e  Used religious parables to teach “American values.”

e  Teach middle class morality and respect for order.

e  Teach “3 Rs” + “Protestant ethic” (frugality, hard work, sobriety)

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“Separate Spheres” Concept

“Cult of Domesticity” e  A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a

refuge from the cruel world outside). e  Her role was to “civilize” her husband and

family.

e  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!

Early 19c Women 1.  Unable to vote or hold public

office. 2.  Legal status of a minor. 3.  Single à could own her own

property. 4.  Married à 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.

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.

Angelina Grimké Sarah Grimké

e  Southern Abolitionists

Lucy Stone e  American Women’s

Suffrage Assoc. e  edited Woman’s Journal

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Women Educators e  Troy, NY Female Seminary e  curriculum: math, physics, history, geography. e  train female teachers

Emma Willard (1787-1870)

Mary Lyon (1797-1849)

e  1837 à she established Mt. Holyoke [So. Hadley, MA] as the first college for women.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell

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Women’s Rights 1848 à Convention in Seneca Falls New York

Lucretia Mott Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1848 à Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments

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Declaration of Sentiment

•  All men and women created equal •  Equal opportunity •  Equal before the law •  Suffrage •  Birth of women’s rights movement

Seneca Falls Declaration