The Second Great Awakening 1. Religious revivals in the 1830s transformed Protestant churches and northern society. 2. Northern ministers such as Charles Grandison Finney preached a new message for this rapidly changing society, including an emphasis on social responsibility and good works. 3. Population growth along the Erie Canal increased fears of rising sin, and Finney responded with prayer meetings that encouraged self-­‐identified sinners to submit themselves to God. 4. Finney’s efforts converted influential members of the region’s middle class, and he and his converts committed themselves to preparing the way for the Second Coming of Christ. 5. The religious revivals of the 1830s touched every Protestant denomination, as well as different ethnic, racial, and social groups. 6. The moral outreach stressed in these revivals encouraged reform movements throughout society, with the temperance movement benefiting the most. New Spirits Rising 1. In the 1840s, Quakers and other religious groups stressing social reform competed for followers with evangelical religious movements. 2. Immigration resulted in an increase in the number of Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues. 3. Joseph Smith established the Mormon religion in the 1830s. 4. Smith created a theocracy with his religion; the Mormon practice of polygamy produced conflict with non-­‐Mormons, which led to Smith’s lynching and the exodus of the Mormons to the Utah Territory under the leadership of Brigham Young. 5. Divisions within denominations resulted in new religious groups such as the Millerites and the Seventh-­‐Day Adventists. START HERE Transcendentalism 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson founded a spiritual school of thought based on the idea of the transcendent power of nature; Emerson’s writings and lectures on transcendentalism proved popular, and the movement spread. 2. Transcendentalism drew many adherents to Emerson’s hometown of Concord, Massachusetts, including Margaret Fuller. Fuller became the first editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial, and she published her ideas about transcendentalism and women’s rights in other works. 3. Henry David Thoreau, another follower of transcendentalism, wrote about morality, conscience, and civil participation in Civil Disobedience, and about simple lifestyles, natural harmony, and social justice in Walden. 4. Artists made connections between the unique aspects of natural beauty in America and the unique culture and power of the United States. The Temperance Movement 1. Many moral reformers were drawn to the temperance movement; as the number of people involved in the movement grew, the goal gradually shifted from moderation to complete abstinence. 2. Temperance drew support from native-­‐born workingmen, who sought to gain dignity and respect by differentiating themselves from the popular caricature of Irish Catholic workers as drunkards. 3. Temperance supporters turned to legal mechanisms to decrease alcohol consumption, and by 1855 twelve states had limited alcohol sales and manufacturing. 4. Temperance reformers used different techniques, including dramatized stories, to persuade Americans about the dangers of alcohol. Members of the laboring class used their own strategies to combat alcohol abuse, including the formation of support groups for alcoholics and their families. 5. The different efforts of temperance advocates reduced but did not eliminate alcohol consumption in the nineteenth century. Utopian Communities (14 min.) 1. Utopian societies developed as a way to model the changes needed throughout society using self-­‐contained communities. 2. Robert Owen was someone who simultaneously sought to create a utopian communalism while also attempting to effect change through political activism. 3. George Ripley created a utopian community in Massachusetts during the 1840s that merged ideas of physical and intellectual labor. Ripley’s community and others were inspired by the ideas of the French socialist Charles Fourier regarding cooperation as a means to combat the effects of capitalism. 4. The Oneida community, established by John Humphrey Noyes in New York in 1848, merged ideas of utopian communalism with sexual freedom for men and women; it attracted hundreds of residents after its founding and thrived for several decades.