Chapter 9

2nd Great Awakening

• 1st Great Awakening – 18th century (weakened traditional churches)

• 2nd Great Awakening – as early as the 1790s, a renewed and passionate interest in religion– Began to develop in towns in upstate New York

• Many people participated in gatherings known as revivals (large religious gatherings)

• Religious enthusiasm sparked changes in Protestant congregations– Personalized sermons appealed to many ordinary

people – promised that salvation could be attained by everyone who repented sins

Movement for Social Reform

• Many reformers saw alcohol abuse as a serious problem facing the nation in the early 1800s– Americans drank an average of 7 gallons per

person/per year

• Reformers organized the Temperance Movement – limit alcohol consumption– Believed that alcohol led to criminal behavior, family

violence, and poverty

• Some reformers demanded Prohibition

Reforming Education• Prior to 1840s, most schools were private, and

most families couldn’t afford to send children to school

• Public Schools– Reformers worried that existing schools wouldn’t

meet demands of a growing nation– Schools essential to educate in democratic values,

create a literate and disciplined workforce– Horace Mann (Mass. 1st Secretary of Education), 1837

united local school districts into a state system– Public high schools develop

Reforming Prisons

• Rehabilitation of criminals also stirred reformers’ interest in the early 1800s

• Up until that time, corporal punishment and fines were most common way of punishing criminals

• Reformers believed that lawbreakers could be reformed then returned to community as productive citizens - Penitentiary

Abolition

• Most northern states had abolished slavery by early 1800s

• Most anti-slavery northerners supported the American Colonization Society – Send free blacks to Africa to found new settlements– Many northern free African Americans strongly

objected the society• William Lloyd Garrison – Liberator (abolitionist

newspaper) – calls for immediate abolition of slavery

Frederick Douglas and Sojourner Truth

• American Anti-Slavery Society• Frederick Douglas – a fugitive slave from

Maryland, spoke publicly against slavery– Speeches about his life convinced many to join the

anti-slavery cause

• Sojourner Truth– Former slave who spoke out against slavery for

American Anti-Slave Society

Women’s Rights

• Call for women’s rights began to be heard in the US after the Revolution

• Women’s concerns did not become an important issue until early 1800s when women became involved in religious an reform movements

Women Declare Their Rights

• Issue of suffrage (vote) and property rights were of particular concern to female activists

• Married women had few rights to own property – even property they inherited

• Laws prevented women from gaining custody of children if they divorced husbands

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton took the effort to lead efforts to address women’s issues

• Stanton and (Lucretia Mott) held the first American meeting on women’s rights in Seneca Falls, New York – Seneca Falls Convention

• About one third of the 300 people in attendance signed the Declaration of Sentiments– Called for legal reforms that would grant married

women the right to control property and earnings and to gain custody of their children in the event of a divorce

– Insisted that women get the right to vote

• Stanton argued that the right vote was crucial to winning equality

Susan B. Anthony• Grew up in a family that supported equality of

men and women• In 1851, Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton– Stanton convinced Anthony to shift focus from

Temperance to women’s rights• Anthony’s work critically important to women’s

rights– Gave speeches, organized petition campaigns, raised

money• Anthony and Stanton campaigned for total

property rights in NY – resulted in Married Women’s Property Act (married women could own property)