• CHAPTER 15 - The Ferment of Reform
and Culture, 1790–1860
Why did America produce
so many reform and utopian
movements? What did they
contribute to American
culture?
• Theme (Social): The spectacular religious
revivals of the Second Great Awakening
reversed a trend toward secular rationalism
in American culture, and helped to fuel a
spirit of social reform. In the process, religion
was increasingly “feminized,” while women in
turn took the lead in movements of reform,
including those designed to improve their
own condition. When in trouble, go back to
go forward…??? Maslow?
Theme (Social): The attempt to improve
Americans’ faith, morals, and character
affected nearly all areas of American life
and culture, including education, the
family, literature, and the arts—culminating
in the great crusade against slavery. So,
does education breed caring, empathy,
and the right type of tolerance?
Theme (Social): Intellectual and
cultural development in America was
less prolific than in Europe, but they
did earn some international
recognition and became more
distinctly American, especially after
the War of 1812. Is this nationalism? I
thought nationalism was just a
political thing. What’s right about it?
What’s wrong?Is this driven by
economics?
Theme (political): Tax-supported public
education was deemed essential for social
stability and democracy. The political
sphere was needed to finance the
education of society. Today: property
taxes…good?
Theme (political): Neal Dow sponsored
the Maine Law of 1851, which called for a
ban on the manufacture and sale of
intoxicating liquor. Political/Government
legislation of moral standards. Good/Bad?
Theme (Economic)The key to Oneida's
financial success was the manufacture of
steel animal traps and silverware. This
utopian society used business to finance their
social goals. Is this okay? Today’s examples?
Theme (Economic) The beliefs advocated by
John Humphrey Noyes included all of the
following:
• no private property.
• sharing of all material goods.
• contrary to the ideal of economic freedom
and individual growth…American dream?
Main Ideas
In early nineteenth century America,
movements of moral and religious reform
accompanied the democratization of
politics and the creation of a national
market economy. After a period of
growing rationalism in religion, a new
wave of revivals beginning about 1800
swept out of the West and effected great
change not only in religious life but also
in other areas of society.
Main Ideas
Existing religious groups were further
fragmented, and new groups like the
Mormons emerged. Women were
especially prominent in these
developments, becoming a major
presence in the churches and discovering
in reform movements an outlet for
energies that were often stifled in
masculinized political and economic life.
• A third revolution accompanied the reformation
of American politics and the transformation of
the American economy in the mid-nineteenth
century, which contained all of the following
characteristics:
• improved the character of ordinary Americans.
• made Americans more upstanding and Godfearing.
• made Americans more literate and educated.
• poured their energies into religious revivals and
reform movements.
The Deist faith embraced all of the following:
• the reliance on reason rather than revolution.
• belief in a Supreme Being.
• belief in human beings' capacity for moral
behavior.
• denial of the divinity of Christ.
___________________________________
Deists like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin
Franklin endorsed the belief that a Supreme
Being endowed human beings with a
capacity for moral behavior.
Unitarians held the following beliefs:
• the belief that God existed in only one
person.
• the denial of the divinity of Christ.
• they stressed the essential goodness
of human nature.
• endorsed the concept of salvation
through good works and the rule of
reason and free will.
All the following are true of the Second Great
Awakening:
• resulted in the conversion of countless souls.
• encouraged a variety of humanitarian reforms.
• strengthened democratic denominations like the
Baptists and Methodists.
• was a reaction against the growing liberalism in
religion.
• Religious revivals resulting in a strong religious
influence in many areas of American life.
• made religion more reliant on women as
members and social reformers.
• promoted religious diversity.
• The Second Great Awakening tended
to widen the lines between classes and
regions.
• The religious sects that gained most from
the revivalism of the Second Great
Awakening were the Methodists and
Baptists.
• The religious zeal of the Second Great
Awakening led to the founding of many
small, denominational, liberal arts
colleges, chiefly in the South and West,
many of which lacked much intellectual
vitality.
• The greatest of the revivalist
preachers, Charles Grandison
Finney advocated opposition to
slavery, a perfect Christian
kingdom on earth, opposition to
alcohol, and public prayer by
women.
• The Mormon religion originated in the
Burned-Over District of New York.
• The original prophet of the Mormon
religion was Joseph Smith.
• Besides polygamy, a characteristic of
Mormonism that angered many nonMormon Americans was their voting as a
unit and openly drilling their militia.
• Another characteristic of the Mormons
that angered many non-Mormons was
their emphasis on cooperative or group
effort.
Main Ideas
Among the first areas to benefit from the reform
impulse was education. The public elementary
school movement gained strength, while a few
women made their way into still tradition-bound
colleges.
Women were also prominent in movements for
improved treatment of the mentally ill, peace,
temperance, and other causes. By the 1840s
some women also began to agitate for their own
rights, including suffrage. The movement for
women’s rights, closely linked to the antislavery
crusade, gained adherents even while it met
strong obstacles and vehement opposition.
• Tax-supported public education was
deemed essential for social stability and
democracy.
• The idea of free public education as an
essential component of American
democracy grew in the early nineteenth
century with the influence of Thomas
Jefferson and Horace Mann.
• In the first half of the nineteenth century,
tax-supported schools were chiefly
available to educate the children of the poor.
• Noah Webster's dictionary helped to
standardize the American language.
• One strong prejudice inhibiting women
from obtaining higher education in the
early nineteenth century was the belief
that too much learning would injure
women's brains and ruin their health.
• Women became especially active in the
social reforms stimulated by the Second
Great Awakening because evangelical
religion emphasized their spiritual dignity,
and religious social reform legitimized their
activity outside the home.
Born: September
23, 1800
Claysville,
Pennsylvania
Died:May 4,
1873 (aged 72)
Charlottesville,
Virginia
Occupation
Educator,
Academic Author
Known for
McGuffey Readers
Example
• New England reformer Dorothea
Dix is most notable for her efforts
on behalf of prison and asylum
reform.
• Two areas where women in the
nineteenth century were widely
thought to be superior to men
were moral sensibility and artistic
refinement.
• Sexual differences were strongly
emphasized in nineteenth-century America
because the market economy increasingly
separated men and women into distinct
economic roles.
• One sign that women in America were
treated better than women in Europe was
that rape was more severely punished in
the United States.
• The excessive consumption of alcohol
by Americans in the 1800s stemmed
from the hard and monotonous life of
many.
• Neal Dow sponsored the Maine Law of
1851, which called for a ban on the
manufacture and sale of intoxicating
liquor.
• By the 1850s, the crusade for women's
rights was eclipsed by abolitionism.
Main Ideas
While many reformers worked to
improve society as a whole, others
created utopian experiments to model
their religious and social ideals. Some
of these groups promoted radical
sexual and economic doctrines, while
others appealed to high-minded
intellectuals and artists.
• The beliefs advocated by John
Humphrey Noyes included all of the
following:
• no private property.
• sharing of all material goods. belief
in a vengeful deity.
• key to happiness is the suppression
of selfishness.
• improvement of the human race
through eugenics.
• The most successful of the earlynineteenth-century communitarian
experiments was at Oneida, New York.
• The key to Oneida's financial success
was the manufacture of steel animal traps
and silverware.
• The Oneida colony declined due
to widespread criticism of its sexual
practices.
• Most of the utopian communities in pre1860s America held cooperative social and
economic practices as one of their founding
ideals.
Main Ideas
American culture was still quite weak in
theoretical sciences and the fine arts, but a
vigorous national literature blossomed after the
War of 1812. In New England the literary
renaissance was closely linked to the philosophy
of transcendentalism promoted by Emerson and
others. Many of the great American writers like
Walt Whitman reflected the national spirit of
utopian optimism, but a few dissenters like
Hawthorne and Melville explored the darker side
of life and of their own society.
• The American medical profession by 1860
was noted for its still primitive standards.
• When it came to scientific achievement,
America in the 1800s was more interested
in practical matters.
• America's artistic achievements in the first
half of the nineteenth century were least
notable in architecture.
• Perhaps the greatest inhibiting factor for
American artists in the first half of the
nineteenth century was the Puritan
prejudice that art was a waste of time.
• The Hudson River school
excelled in the art of
painting landscapes.
• A genuinely American literature
received a strong boost from
the wave of nationalism that
followed the War of 1812.
All of the following influenced
transcendental thought:
• German philosophers.
• Oriental religions.
• individualism.
• love of nature.
________________________________
• Transcendentalists believed that all
knowledge came through an inner light.
“Civil Disobedience,” an essay
that later influenced both
Mahatma Gandhi and Martin
Luther King, Jr., was written by
the transcendentalist Henry David
Thoreau.
• The Poet Laureate of Democracy, whose
emotional and explicit writings expressed a deep
love of the masses and enthusiasm for an
expanding America, was Walt Whitman.
• A dark writer whose genres included poetry,
horror stories, and detective fiction was Edgar
Allan Poe, one American writer who did not
believe in human goodness and social progress
• The writer who faded to obscurity in the
nineteenth century but was recognized as one of
America's greatest geniuses in the twentieth
century was Herman Melville.
• The most noteworthy southern novelist before the
Civil War was William Gilmore Simms.
Virtually all the distinguished
historians of early-nineteenthcentury America came from New
England.
WHY?
DONE :#)
• How important is a free public education to
a republic? If it is important, why then was
early education so poor? If it is not
important, why did it begin? Do you agree
that public education was "an insurance
premium that the wealthy paid for stability
and democracy," as the authors assert? Is
it important to a republic to have
compulsory public education?
The American Pageant - Chapter 15
• The Second Great Awakening was in part
an evangelical religious reaction against
– 1. the growing influence of Catholicism in
America.
– 2. widespread secularism and atheism.
– 3. the growth of liberal religious movements
like Unitarianism and Deism.
– 4. the loss of political and social influence by
the clergy.
• The Second Great Awakening was in
part an evangelical religious reaction
against
– 3. the growth of liberal religious
movements like Unitarianism and Deism.
– See page 321.
• Methodists and Baptists were large
denominational winners in the Second
Great Awakening largely because of
their doctrines of
– 1. predestination and the perseverance of
the saints.
– 2. liturgical renewal and frequent reception
of holy communion.
– 3. strong clergy leadership and religious
education.
– 4. personal religious conversion and
democratic church governance.
• Methodists and Baptists were large
denominational winners in the Second
Great Awakening largely because of
their doctrines of
– 4. personal religious conversion and
democratic church governance.
– See pages 321–322.
• Before their great migration to Utah in
1846–1847, the Mormons had lived in
all the following places except
– 1. upstate New York.
– 2. Illinois
– 3. Kentucky.
– 4. Illinois.
• Before their great migration to Utah in
1846–1847, the Mormons had lived in
all the following places except
– 3. Kentucky.
– See page 323.
• The best American painting before the
Civil War increasingly turned to
– 1. portraits.
– 2. realistic social depiction.
– 3. natural landscapes.
– 4. impressionism.
• The best American painting before the
Civil War increasingly turned to
– 3. natural landscapes.
– See pages 338–339.
• America’s first internationally recognized
writers, Washington Irving and James
Fenimore Cooper, were greatly
stimulated in their work by
– 1. the upsurge of American nationalism
following the War of 1812.
– 2. the religious revivals of the Second Great
Awakening.
– 3. the spirit of social reform, especially the
antislavery movement.
– 4. their criticism of what they saw as
Americans’ naïve innocence and idealism.
• America’s first internationally recognized
writers, Washington Irving and James
Fenimore Cooper, were greatly
stimulated in their work by
– 1. the upsurge of American nationalism
following the War of 1812.
– See page 340.
• The greatest difficulty that Horace Mann
and other reformers faced in creating
universal, free public education was
– 1. the widespread belief that education
should be privately supported.
– 2. hostility from religious groups who
feared secular education.
– 3. adequate funding.
– 4. the image of elementary education as a
women’s field.
• The greatest difficulty that Horace Mann
and other reformers faced in creating
universal, free public education was
– 3. adequate funding.
– See pages 324–325.
• The first American college to admit both
women and blacks was
– 1. Harvard.
– 2. the University of North Carolina.
– 3. Oberlin College.
– 4. Mount Holyoke College.
• The first American college to admit both
women and blacks was
– 3. Oberlin College.
– See page 327.
• The energetic pre–Civil War religious
reformers attacked all of the following
social evils except
– 1. excessive drinking of liquor.
– 2. slavery.
– 3. cruel treatment of the mentally ill.
– 4. the harsh conditions of industrial
laborers.
• The energetic pre–Civil War religious
reformers attacked all of the following
social evils except
– 4. the harsh conditions of industrial
laborers.
– See pages 328–329.
• The most daring demand put forward by
the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848
was
– 1. women’s right to vote.
– 2. an immediate end to slavery.
– 3. complete access of all occupations to
women at the same rate of pay as men.
– 4. coeducation in all public colleges and
universities.
• The most daring demand put forward by
the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848
was
– 1. women’s right to vote.
– See pages 331–332.
• Which of the following was not among
the prominent utopian communal
experiments launched in early
nineteenth-century America?
– 1. Brook Farm
– 2. Blithesdale
– 3. New Harmony
– 4. Oneida
• Which of the following was not among
the prominent utopian communal
experiments launched in early
nineteenth-century America?
– 2. Blithesdale
– See pages 332–334.