The Ferment of Reform and Culture
Chapter 15 Lecture Notes
The Ferment of Reform and Culture
•Guiding Question:
To what extent were the 2nd Great
Awakening reformers “moral
busybodies” as the Jacksonians
had claimed?
Faith in America: 1800-1850
• 75% of all Americans attended church regularly
•
in 1850.
Many people began looking to science for
religious answers including Thomas Jefferson
and Ben Franklin.
– “Deists” believed in a Supreme Being but relied on
reason rather than revelation and refuted the ideas of
Christ’s divinity and original sin
– Deism helped inspire the Unitarian faith in New
England which put forth the ideas that God existed in
only one person (no trinity), denied the deity of
Jesus, and stressed the essential goodness of human
nature; popular with intellectuals who did not believe
in the hellfire and brimstone of traditional religion.
The Second Great Awakening
• It was a boiling reaction against the
growing religious liberalism that had
sprung up around 1800; it inspired many
powerful movements across the country
– Revivals: religious meetings where people
met and experienced the hellfire gospel
– Reform: changes in many areas of American
life specifically the altering of systems that
might be bad for humanity
– Feminization: women took a more active role
in bringing their families back to God and
saving the rest of society
Denominational Diversity
• Great Awakening widened differences
between classes and regions
– Eastern areas not as affected by revivalism
• Upper classes in these areas stayed with
conservative, traditional churches (Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, and Congregationalists).
– Southern and western areas most strongly
affected
• Methodists and Baptists (and other revival sects)
grew among poorer, less educated people
The Second Great Awakening
• New Religious Denominations
– Millerites (Adventists): group that rose
from the “Burned-Over District” (area in
Western New York where descendents of New
England Puritans preached hellfire!); Several
hundred thousand members believed that
Christ would return to earth on 10/22/1844;
He didn’t quite make it and the movement
slowed down a bit but did not destroy it.
The Second Great Awakening
• New Religious Denominations
– Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
(Mormons): founded in the Burned-Over District by
Joseph Smith around the 1830 who claimed to have
received golden plates from an angel---he deciphered
the tablets and they constituted the Book of Mormon.
Serious opposition arose after the founding of the
church due to drilling a militia and accusations of
polygamy; Upon Smith’s death, Brigham Young led
the Mormons to Utah where they flourished and
practiced their religious customs; Utah was denied
statehood until 1896 because of their acceptance of
polygamy and the anti-polygamy laws that Congress
had passed
Changes in Education
• Free Public Schools: driven by
•
reformers like Horace Mann, states
campaigned for more and better
schools, longer school terms, higher
pay for teachers, and an expanded
curriculum (beyond the traditional
3-Rs “readin’, ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmetic”)
Improved Textbooks: encouraged
by people like Noah Webster who
designed reading lessons, schools
began to promote patriotism
through literacy; William H.
McGuffey sold 122 million copies of
the McGuffey Reader which
hammered home lessons in
morality, patriotism, and idealism.
Higher Education
• State-Supported Colleges and Universities
– Federal land given so as to build campuses
– University of Virginia (1819): founded by Thomas
Jefferson as an institution for free thinkers of the
natural sciences and liberal arts
– Women’s schools: gained respectability around 1820
• Troy Female Seminary (1821)
• Oberlin College (1837)
• Mount Holyoke Seminary (1837)
• Libraries: Private and Tax-Supported collections
•
of books
Lyceum Lecture Associations: Speakers would
travel and lecture on topics like science,
literature, and moral philosophy
Reform Movements
• Areas of concern for reform:
– Debtor’s Prisons were gradually abolished
– Capital Offenses were reduced and punishments that
were extremely cruel were eliminated
– Insane Asylums were reformed
• Dorothea Dix: traveled all over the country documenting the
ills of life in the asylums until many legislatures improved
conditions
– Drinking: Organizations like the American Temperance
Society challenged alcohol and its social ills; promoters
looked to prohibit alcoholic consumption
Women in Revolt
• Gender differences strongly emphasized
– Market Economy separating men and women
• Women: physically and emotionally weak, but
artistic and refined; endowed with moral sensibility
and responsible to teach the young how to be good,
productive citizens in the Republic
• Men: strong but crude; always in danger of slipping
into some savage or beastly way of life
– “Cult of Domesticity”: the concept that the
proper role of women was to manage their
homes and be good wives and mothers
Women in Revolt
Women’s Rights Movement
– Organized the Women’s Rights Convention
in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848.
• Declaration of Sentiments: “all men
and women are created equal”
• Leaders of the convention: Susan B.
Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
– Women challenged the man’s world
• Elizabeth Blackwell: 1st female grad of
medical school
• Grimke Sisters: championed antislavery
• Lucy Stone: retained her maiden name
after marriage
• Amelia Bloomer: wore a shorter skirt
with Turkish Trowsers or “Bloomers”
underneath
Wilderness Utopias
• Robert Owen:
– Seeking human betterment, Owen used his vast financial
resources to set up New Harmony in Indiana; harmony did not
prevail as the population consisted of hard-working visionaries
and dirty, rotten scoundrels which made for a confused
environment
• Brook Farm:
– 20 intellectuals committed to transcendentalism founded this
community in Massachusetts; was very successful until a fire
destroyed a communal building; debt ruined the establishment--they truly bought the farm! Hehe 
• Oneida Community:
– Founded in New York, this experimental society practiced free
love and even worked to select parents to produce superior
offspring; it flourished for 30+ years largely because its artisans
made great steel items
“American” Art, Literature, and
Thought
• Art:
– Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828): talented artist
who wielded his brush in Britain in
competition with the best artists; painted
several portraits of George Washington--most being idealized and dehumanized
– Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827): Maryland
artist who painted Washington 60+ times of
which Washington sat for fourteen of them!
– John Trumbull (1756-1843): Revolutionary
War veteran who painted spirited scenes of
the glorious victory over Britain
The Surrender of Lord Cornwallis---John Trumbull
George Washington---Gilbert Stuart
“American” Art, Literature, and
Thought
• Literature:
– Knickerbocker Group of New York: group of
writers who wrote boastful literature to match
America’s landscape
– Washington Irving (1783-1859): first
American to win international acclaim with
stories like Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow.
– James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851): the
first American novelist who wrote books like
The Spy (American Revolution story) and The
Last of the Mohicans
“American” Art, Literature, and
Thought
• Thought:
– Transcendentalism: movement in
the 1830s that attempted to liberalize
the Puritan theology; belief that truth
“transcends” the senses and cannot be
found through observation; influenced
heavily by the Romantics of Europe
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: the
“Transcendental MAN”! Known for
his collections of essays; namely,
Self Reliance and Experience
• Henry David Thoreau:
nonconformist; author of Walden
and Civil Disobedience
• Walt Whitman: poet of the
movement; author of collection
called Leaves of Grass
T
Ralph Waldo Emerson