The Ferment of
Reform and Culture
1790-1860
Religion in America
• Most Americans attended
church on a regular basis,
but the fervor of the
colonial era had waned.
• 1794 -- Thomas Paine
publishes The Age of
Reason attacking the
institution of the church.
• Many people became
believers in Deism -Franklin and Jefferson.
• Deists relied on reason
over faith.
Unitarianism
• Belief in God as one
person -- not the trinity.
• Stressed the essential
goodness of human
beings.
• Embraced by
intellectuals
such as Ralph
Waldo
Emerson
The Second Great Awakening
• 1800 - Second Great
Awakening begins as a
backlash against the
liberalism of the Age of
Reason.
• Led to an era of evangelism and
reform.
• Methodists and Baptists led camp
meetings and sent missionaries to
the Indians and overseas.
1830’s
• Peter
Cartwright Methodist
“circuit
rider”
preacher.
• Charles
Grandison
Finney conducts
revivals in
eastern cities.
The Burned-Over District
• 1830’s -- William
Miller led the
Adventists (Millerites)
to believe the second
coming was to happen
on Oct. 22, 1844.
• Southern and northern
branches of the Methodist
and Baptist churches
broke apart over the issue
of slavery.
1830
• Joseph Smith
founds Mormon
church - claims to
have been given
golden plates by
the Angel Moroni.
• The plates
constituted the
Book of
Mormon and
gave rise to the
Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter
Day Saints.
• Mormons follow Smith
west to Ohio, Missouri
and finally Illinois.
• Locals persecuted the
Mormons for
cooperativism, voting as a
unit, having their own
militia and practicing
polygamy.
• 1844 -- Joseph Smith
and his brother were
killed by a mob in
Carthage, Ill.
• 1846-47 -Brigham
Young led the
Mormons to
Salt Lake,
Utah. 5000
had settled by
1848.
• 1850 -- Young becomes
territorial governor
• 1859 -- “Mormon War” -Federal troops force
Mormons to submit to
Federal authority.
Education
• Free tax-supported education
slowly gained support at all
levels of society.
• The Little Red Schoolhouse
and the “3 R’s”
Winslow Homer
Horace Mann
•led the crusade
for better
teachers, better
schools and
longer school
years.
• Helped create “normal
schools” -- teaching
colleges to train
teachers.
Noah Webster
• “the Schoolmaster of the
Republic,” he improved
textbooks and
standardized an American
dictionary.
William H. McGuffey
• created the grade
school readers
McGuffey’s Readers
which taught
grammar and
moralism,
patriotism and
idealism.
Higher Education
• The Second Great
Awakening led to the
creation of many small,
denominational liberal-arts
colleges.
• Federal land grant colleges.
The University of Virginia
• founded and designed by
Thomas Jefferson - founded
as a non-religious institution
dedicated to science and
modern language.
Women’s education
• education for women was
considered frivolous.
• Emma Willard established
the Troy Female
Seminary in 1821.
• Oberlin College -admitted women in 1837
after already having
admitted Blacks.
• Mary Lyon established
Mount Holyoke Seminary
in Mass.
The Lyceums
• Travelling lecturers made
the circuit giving talks on
science, literature and
philosophy.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
Magazines
• The North American
Review founded in
1815
•Godey’s
Lady’s Book
founded in
1830
An Age of Reform
• Reform
movements
included:
• women’s rights,
communal living,
• Medical programs,
polygamy,
“free marriages”,
celibacy.
• Anti- tobacco, antialcohol, and mail on
Sundays.
• Women were very
involved in abolitionism,
women’s suffrage and
other reforms.
Prison Reform
• The laboring class voted
for an end to debtors
prisons.
• The number of capital
crimes was reduced and
prisons were called to
reform instead of just
punish.
Dorothea Dix
• traveled 60,000
miles
chronicling the
abuses against
the mentally ill.
• Dix petitioned the
Massachusetts Legislature
to improve conditions.
The American Peace
Society
• Anti-war group led by
William Ladd called for
an end to war.
Temperance Movement
• Custom
and a hard
life led to
widespread
alcohol
abuse.
• The
American
Temperance
Society was
formed in
1826.
• T.S. Arthur wrote the
novel Ten Nights in a
Barroom and What I Saw
There.
• Neal S. Dow sponsored
the Maine Law of 1851
which prohibited the
manufacture and sale of
alcohol.
Women’s Rights
• Lucretia Mott,
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
• and Susan B. Anthony.
• Advocated women’s
suffrage.
• Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
was the first female
graduate of a medical
college.
• Margaret Fuller edited
The Dial.
• The Grimke sister spoke
against slavery.
• Lucy Stone
kept her
maiden
name after
she was
married.
• Amelia
Bloomer wore
a short skirt
with “Turkish”
trousers.
Seneca Falls (1848)
• Women’s Rights convention
at which Stanton read the
“Declaration of Sentiments”
• Women’s rights became
eclipsed by Abolition and
the Civil War.
Utopianism
• more than 40 communes
were created during the
period.
Robert Owen
• 1825 established New
Harmony, IN.
attracted
scholars and
scoundrels.
New Harmony
Brook Farm
• was a successful attempt at
communal living until fire
destroyed the experiment.
Oneida Colony
• Founded in
NY in 1848,
experimented
in “complex
marriages”
and eugenics.
• They
made and
sold steel
traps and
silverware.
• After troubles with the
law the group embraced
monogamy and
abandoned communism.
Scientific Achievement
• Practical science
• Nathaniel Bowditch and
Matthew Maury in
Navigation and
Oceanography
• Benjamin Silliman biology and geology
professor at Yale.
• Louis Aggasiz - biology
professor at Harvard.
• Asa Gray - Botany at
Harvard
• were supporters of
Charles Darwin.
• John J. Audubon - painted
birds in the wild.-- “Birds of
America”
Audubon’s
Birds
• Medicine was
slow to catch
up to
scientific
achievement
The Arts
• Architecture - Thomas
Jefferson
• Painters - Gilbert Stuart,
Charles Wilson Peale,
John Trumbull.
John Singleton Copley
Gilbert
Stuart
Gilbert
Stuart’s
Washington
Charles
Wilson Peale
John Trumbull
Music
• Minstrels in “blackface”
sang “darky tunes”
• Stephen Foster - “Old
Folks at Home”
Literature
• essays - The Federalist,
Common Sense.
• Ben Franklin's Autobiography
The Knickerbocker Group
• Washington Irving - Rip Van
Winkle.
• James Fenimore Cooper the first American novelist.
• William Cullen Bryant poet (“Thanatopsis”) and
editor of the New York
Evening Post.
Transcendentalism
• believed that people have
an inner light that allows
direct contact with God.
• They emphasized
individualism and self
reliance.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
• famous address to Phi
Beta Kappa “The
American Scholar”
Ralph
Waldo
Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
• Walden: Or Life in the
Woods
• Civil Disobedience
Walt
Whitman
The Poet
Laureate of
Democracy
• Leaves of Grass
Literary Lights.
• Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
• John Greenleaf Whittier
• James Russell Lowell
• Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes
• William Gilmore Simms
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Herman Melville
Daily Diversions
• Stage plays: Uncle Tom’s
Cabin ; Ten Nights in a
Barroom.
• Famous Actors: Edwin
Forrest, Junius Brutus
Booth - (sons = Edwin
Booth and John W.
Booth)
Sports and Shows
• Horse racing; baseball;
• Showboats; Circuses
• Phineas T. Barnum “a
sucker is born every
minute”
Taking the waters
• upper class crowd
“summered” at resorts
like Saratoga Springs and
Newport, RI.
• Rich often made the
“Grand Tour” of Europe.