The Second Great Awakening
Utopias
Artistic/Literary Movements
Complete the chart as you view
this PowerPoint.
Introduction
● A lot going on in the early 19th century
o Shift towards industrialization (market
economy)
o Irish & German immigrants pouring into the
country
o Enlightenment and Deism
● In many ways the reform movement, Second Great
Awakening, Transcendentalism, and the Artistic
movements were a reaction to events/thoughts
mentioned above.
Transcendentalism-What is it?
Transcendentalism is a very formal word that
describes a very simple idea. People, men and women
equally, have knowledge about themselves and the
world around them that "transcends" or goes beyond
what they can see, hear, taste, touch or feel.
This knowledge comes through intuition and
imagination not through logic or the senses. People
can trust themselves to be their own authority on
what is right. A Transcendentalist is a person who
accepts these ideas not as religious beliefs but as a
way of understanding life relationships.
Romanticism
Also referred to as the Romantic
era or the Romantic period was an
artistic, literary, and
intellectual movement that
originated in Europe toward the
end of the 18th century and in
most areas was at its peak in the
approximate period from 1800 to
1850.
Romantic poets cultivated individualism, reverence for the natural world,
idealism, physical and emotional passion, and an interest in the mystic
and supernatural. Romantics set themselves in opposition to the order and
rationality of classical and neoclassical artistic precepts to embrace
freedom and revolution in their art and politics.
German romantic poets
Fredrich Schiller
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe-Faust
British poets
Lord Byron-Don Juan
John Keats
French poets
Victor Hugo-The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Les Miserables
Americans
Walt Whitman-Leaves of Grass
Edgar Allen Poe-The Raven
Nathaniel Hawthorne-The Scarlet Letter
Ralph Waldo Emerson-Self-Reliance
The romantic era produced many of the stereotypes of poets and poetry that
exist to this day (i.e., the poet as a tortured and melancholy visionary).
Effects of Enlightenment on Religion
● Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason
o Bashed religion
 “set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize
power and profit.”
● Deism: belief that there is a God, but that organized religion
was nothing but myth
o Deists believed that God gave mankind reason to decipher
the world around them
o Founding Fathers who were deists or suspected to be deists
include
 Thomas Paine, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas
Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin
● Unitarianism
o Did not believe in the Christian interpretation of God
(Jesus was not divine)
Second Great Awakening
●
●
A reaction to the deism and Unitarianism
Second Great Awakening led to a religious revival
o Women were strong supporters of this movement
and it inspired them to promote change in
America
 Temperance, Suffrage, & Abolition
o Camp Meetings
 Charles Finney
 Peter Cartwright
Short Answer Response-answer on
your handout
● How did Deism, the Second Great
Awakening, continued denomination
fragmentation, and Mormons shape
American life?
Utopias- The Oneida Community
● Read the Makers of America: The Oneida
Community
http://www.nyhistory.com/central/oneida
.htm
● and answer the following prompt in
short answer format
o What were the fundamental human and
social problems that Noyes’s radical
ideas attempted to address? Why was
he able to put them into practice in
Artistic Achievements
● Read part 1 of the following
article.
John Trumbull- The Declaration of Independence
John Trumbull- The Death of General Warren at the Battle
of Bunker Hill
Thomas Cole- The Oxbow
Albert Bierstadt- Yosemite Valley
Albert Bierstadt- Lake Tahoe
Charles Willson
PealeGeorge
Washington and
the Battle
Princeton
Emanuel Leutze- Washington the Crossing the Delaware
Sunny Morning on Hudson River-Thomas Cole (1827)
American Progress (1872)-John Gast
List pros and cons regarding Public Education in
America
Use your textbook and your reformers chart
● Who supported
public education
and who didn’t?
● Important Info on
Public Education
Short Answer Response: Public Education
● What educational developments occurred
in the 1st half of the 19th century?
American Literature
● National Literature
o Washington Irving
 “Rip Van Winkle”
 “The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow”
o Herman Melville

o
Nathaniel Hawthorne

o
Moby Dick
Scarlet Letter
James Fenimore Cooper
Transcendentalism
● A reaction to Enlightenment & Unitarianism
o Famous Transcendentalists
 Ralph W. Emerson was trained as a
Unitarian minister
●
Encouraged Americans to create a
unique and American culture
 Henry David Thoreau
●
Condemned gov’t support of slavery
●
Walden: Or Life in the Woods
Lived the simple life for two
years
Nonviolent approach inspired MLK &
Gandhi
o
●
Transcendentalism
1. “Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We
must trust the perfection of creation so to believe that whatever
curiosity the order of things has awakened in our mind, the order of
things can satisfy.” (Emerson)
1. “All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.”
(Emerson)
1. “Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I
drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.” (Thoreau)
1. “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is
because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which
he hears, however measured or far away.” (Thoreau)
1. “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the