THE PURSUIT OF
PERFECTION
America: Past and Present
Chapter 12
The Rise of Evangelicalism
Separation of church and state gives all
churches the chance to compete for
converts
 Pious Protestants form voluntary
associations to combat sin, “infidelity”
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The Second Great Awakening:
The Frontier Phase
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Camp meetings contribute to frontier life
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provide emotional religion
offer opportunity for social life
Camp meeting revivals convey intensely
personal religious message
 Camp meetings rarely lead to social
reform
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The Second Great Awakening
in the North
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In New England reformers defend Calvinism
against the Enlightenment
Charles G. Finney rejects Calvinism to preach
free will
Finney preaches in upstate New York
Finney stresses revival technique
Appeals to emotion
Revivals lead to organization of more churches
Shakers
From Revivalism to Reform
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Northern revivals stimulate reform
Middle-class participants adapt evangelical religion to
preserve traditional values
"The benevolent empire" of evangelical reform
movements alter American life
– e.g. temperance movement cuts alcohol
consumption by more than fifty percent
– Lyman Beecher
Temperance
Temperance campaigns:
 altered middle class habits,
 set up thousands of organizations,
 became a mark of respectability
 Decreased hard liquor consumption by
over 50 percent
However – it did not cure confirmed
drunkards
Domesticity and Changes in
the American Family
New conception of family’s role in
society
 Child rearing seen as essential
preparation for self-disciplined Christian
life
 Women confined to domestic sphere
 Women assume crucial role within
home

Marriage for Love
Mutual love must characterize marriage
 Wives became more of a companion to
their husbands and less of a servant
 Legally, the husband was the
unchallenged head of the household
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The Cult of Domesticity
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"The Cult of True Womanhood"
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places women in the home
glorifies home as center of all efforts to
civilize and Christianize society
Middle- and upper-class women
increasingly dedicated to the home as
mothers
 Women of leisure enter reform
movements
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The Discovery of Childhood
Nineteenth-century child the center of
family
 Each child seen as unique, irreplaceable
 Ideal to form child’s character with
affection
 Parental discipline to instill guilt, not fear
 Train child to learn self-discipline
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Institutional Reform
Domesticity to inform public institutions
 Schools continue what family begins
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– Horace Mann and public education
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Asylums, prisons mend family’s failures
– Dorothea Dix
The Extension of Education
Public schools expand rapidly 1820-1850
 Working class sees as means to advance
 Middle-class reformers see as means for
inculcating values of hard work,
responsibility
 Horace Mann argues schools save
immigrants, poor children from parents’ bad
influence
 Many parents believe public schools
alienate children from their parents
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Discovering the Asylum
Poor, criminal, insane seen as lacking
self-discipline
 Harsh measures to promote
rehabilitation
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solitary confinement of prisoners
strict daily schedule
Public support for rehabilitation skimpy
 Prisons, asylums, poorhouses become
warehouses for the unwanted
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Reform Turns Radical
Most reform aims to improve society
 Some radical reformers seek
destruction of old society, creation of
perfect social order
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Divisions in the Benevolent
Empire
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Radical perfectionists impatient by
1830s, split from moderate reform
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temperance movement
peace movement
antislavery movement
Moderates seek gradual end to slavery
 Radicals demand immediate
emancipation
 1833--American Anti-Slavery Society
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The Abolitionist Enterprise:
Theodore Dwight Weld
Weld an itinerant minister converted by
Finney
 Adapted his revivalist techniques to
abolition
 Successful mass meetings in Ohio, New
York
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The Abolitionist Enterprise:
Public Reception
Largest appeal in hard-working small town
folk in upper north
 Opposition in cities & near Mason-Dixon line
 Opposition from the working class
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dislike blacks
fear black economic and social competition
Solid citizens see abolitionists as anarchists
American Colonization Society
Founded in 1817
 Provide transportation to Africa for free
blacks and emancipated slaves
 Relieve fears in South of race war
erupting if slaves released
 Established colony in Liberia in 1821
 Repudiated by Garrison
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The Abolitionist Enterprise: Obstacles
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Abolitionists hampered by in-fighting
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William Lloyd Garrison (The Liberator) disrupts
movement by associating with radical reform
efforts
– urged abolitionists to abstain from participating in the
political process
– also got involved in women’s rights movement
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Some abolitionists help form the Liberty Party in
1840
Black Abolitionists
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Former slaves related the horrible realities
of bondage
– prominent figures included Frederick
Douglass (North Star) and Sojourner Truth
Black newspapers, books, and pamphlets
publicized abolitionism to a wider audience
 Blacks were also active in the
Underground Railroad (Harriet Tubman)
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From Abolitionism to Women's
Rights
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Abolitionism open to women’s participation
William Lloyd Garrisons stand on promoting women’s
rights at American Anti-slavery Convention in 1840 led to
split in abolitionist movement
Involvement raises awareness of women’s inequality
Seneca Falls Convention in 1848
– Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organize
– prompted by experience of inequality in abolition
movement
– begins movement for women’s rights
Radical Ideas & Experiments:
Utopian Communities
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Utopian socialism
– Inspired by Robert Owen, Charles Fourier
– New Harmony, Indiana—Owenite
– Fourierite phalanxes
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Religious utopianism
– Shakers
– Oneida Community
Utopian Communities Before the
Civil War
Radical Ideas & Experiments:
Transcendentalism
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American version of romanticism
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self Reliance)
Margaret Fuller (Women in the 19th Century)
George Ripley
– founded cooperative community at Brook Farm
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
– Led to peaceful civil disobedience movements of Ghandi and
Martin Luther King
Counterpoint on Reform
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Reform encounters perceptive critics
– Nathaniel Hawthorne allegorically refuted
perfectionist movements
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Reform prompts necessary changes in
American life