Religion & Reform
A Religious Awakening
The Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening profoundly influenced
American life. Church membership skyrocketed.
Reawakened religious feeling moved Americans to work
for a wide variety of social reforms.
Second Great Awakening – Religious revival
movement in the first half of the 1800s.
Revivalist – Preacher who works to renew the importance of religion in
American life.
The Second Great Awakening began on the frontier in Kentucky and then
spread north and south, reaching the cities of the Northeast in the 1820s.
Hundreds of preachers, including Charles Grandison Finney, set up revivalist
camps in rural areas and attracted thousands of converts throughout the
country. The converted often became so frenzied that they would roll, jerk,
shake, shout, and even bark in excitement.
Evangelical – Style of worship meant to elicit powerful emotions
to gain converts.
African Americans Embrace Spirit
Many preachers of the Second Great Awakening welcomed African
Americans at their revivals. However, some African Americans
established their own, separate churches.
In 1816, several of these churches united to become the African
Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. By 1826, the AME Church had
nearly 8,000 members.
New Religious Groups Form
The Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon
The
Mormons Church, was founded by Ohioan Joseph Smith in 1830.
Mormons believed God had entrusted them with a new
set of scriptures called the Book of Mormon.
Because Smith also advocated polygamy, Mormons
faced intense hostility and persecution from Protestants
throughout the Midwest.
An angry Illinois mob murdered Smith in 1844, his disciple
Brigham Young took charge of the church and led a mass
migration to the desert around the Great Salt Lake.
There the Mormons converted the barren lands
into an oasis suitable for growing crops. Utah,
the territory settled by the Mormons, did not
become a state until 1896, when Mormons
agreed to abandon the practice of polygamy.
The
Unitarians
Members of Unitarian churches saw God as one being,
instead of the traditional trinity (three beings) and created their own
church around the ideas.
Catholics & Jewish People Face Discrimination
Members of the Roman Catholic Church faced harsh discrimination in the
early 1800s. Many Protestants viewed Catholicism as incompatible with
American ideals of democracy.
Poor Irish Catholics faced discrimination because they
had little money, they would work for extremely low wages,
which threatened other workers.
Jewish people also faced discrimination. Until late in the 19th century, Jews
were barred from holding political office in many parts of the U.S.
Utopian Communities
During the early 1800s, dozens of groups of
Americans sought to improve their lives in a
unique way. They chose to distance themselves
from society by setting up communities based on
unusual ways of sharing property, labor, and
family life. These settlements came to be called
utopian communities, or utopias, because they
aspired to be perfect communities.
New
Harmony
Brook
Farm
A community of roughly 1,000 Americans in Indiana who believed
socialistic communities could end poverty. The community collapsed in
just a few short years.
A community in Massachusetts closely affiliated with the
Transcendentalist movement, preached harmony with nature and
modest living. This community collapsed within a few years.
The
Shakers
sMovement
Located in several states and boasted more than half a million members
at its height, ultimately dissolved because believers were forbidden to
marry or have sex.
Transcendentalists Advance New Ideas
The New England Transcendentalists argued
that not all knowledge comes from the senses
and that ultimate truth “transcends” the
physical world. Transcendentalists believed in
the divinity of man’s inner consciousness and
thought that nature revealed the whole of
God’s moral law.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman championed selfreliance and a rugged individualism that matched the character of the developing
nation.
Review: Religious Awakening
Religion in the Early 1800s
Second Great Awakening
Discrimination
Other Religious Movements
Camp Meetings
Mormons persecuted by Protestants
Utopian communities try to create perfect
societies.
African Americans form their own
churches.
Catholics face discrimination.
Shaker communities prosper.
Poor Irish Catholics seen as a threat.
Transcendentalists promote new beliefs.
Jewish people banned from public
office.
People debate the roles of churches and
state.
Religion & Reform
A Reforming Society
Reforming Education
The leaders of the Second Great Awakening preached that their followers had a
sacred responsibility to improve life on earth. One of the most popular reform
movements was in the field of education. There were no public schools that children
were required by law to attend, most children did not go to school.
One of the greatest reformers was Horace Mann. Mann advanced
the idea of free public schools that all children were required by law to
attend. The Public School Movement sought to establish a
system of tax-supported public schools.
He argued for:
•state oversight of local schools
•standardized school calendars
•adequate school funding
•abolishment of physical punishment
•establishment of well-educated, professional teachers.
Mann’s influence was felt nationwide. Government-supported public schools became
the norm across the nation. The percentage of American children attending school
doubled.
Helping the Ill & Imprisoned
A schoolteacher from Mass., Dorothea Dix spearheaded the campaign
to establish publicly funded insane asylums to help the mentally ill.
Her report on the unthinkable treatment of insane women in the state’s
prisons convinced legislators to build the first asylums.
Dix traveled thousands of miles promoting her cause. Dix and others
also worked to reform American prisons. Until that time, most people
viewed prisons as a place to punish criminals.
Prison reformers, however thought that prisons should make
criminals feel sorrow for their crimes. The prison reform system
is thus sometimes called the penitentiary movement.
Many American prisons followed the Auburn model.
At the Auburn prison, in Central NY, in the 1820s,
prisoners worked with one another during the day in
strict silence but slept in individual cells at night.
The Temperance Movement
Many of the days problems were attributed to the widespread use of
alcohol. In response, reformers launched the temperance movement,
an effort to end alcohol abuse and the problems created by it. The
Temperance Movement sought to ban the manufacture, sale, and
consumption of alcohol.
Temperance – Drinking alcholic beverages in moderation.
Neal Dow earned a worldwide reputation for his lectures on alcohol
abuse. As mayor of Portland, ME, he succeeded in securing the passage of the socalled “Maine Law,” which restricted the sale of alcohol.
Within a few years, a dozen states had passed similar laws. Temperance would
remain an enduring issue for the next 100 years.
Q: Is the cartoonist in favor for the
temperance movement or against? Why?
(Hint: Read the caption)
A: The cartoonist is in favor of temperance.
He blames cholera, fevers, murder, epilepsy
on alcohol.
Social Reforms in the Early 1800s
Causes
Efforts to Reform
Educating all Americans
Public school movement pushes
for free schools.
The Mentally ill were
imprisoned with criminals
Prisons treated inmates in
a cruel manner
Many believed that alcohol
caused society’s problems.
Separate mentally ill from
criminals.
Effects
1. Some states fund schools
2. Schools increase in number
3. Some taxpayers are reluctant
1. Mental hospitals are built
1. New prisons built that are less
Dorothea Dix fought for prisoners’
cruel.
rights.
Reformers warned the public
about effects of alcohol.
1. American Temperance Society
is formed.
2. Laws are passed to restrict
alcohol.
Religion & Reform
The Antislavery Movement
Life Under Slavery
Men, women, and children labored from dawn to dusk at backbreaking tasks.
1. cultivating fields of cotton
2. loading freight onto ships
3. preparing meals in scorching hot kitchens
Their “overseers” maintained brutal work routines by punishing
people physically with beatings and whippings, and mentally,
through humiliation and the threat of being separated from
family members. Often, enslaved people were not allowed to
learn to read, and family members who were separated
never heard from each other again.
Surviving Through Spirit & Strength
The miserable conditions forced on enslaved people
took their inevitable toll. (Some took their own lives.)
In a remarkable triumph of spirit over hardship, most
enslaved people maintained their hope and dignity.
1. They worked to maintain networks of family and
friends.
2. Parents passed on family stories that children
could cherish wherever they might find
themselves.
3. They took comfort in their religion.
Resisting Slavery
Many enslaved people did whatever they could to fight
back against their oppressors. A loose network of everchanging escape routes called the Underground
Railroad helped many reach freedom.
In 1831, a slave named Nat Turner led a revolt
near Richmond, VA. Turner believed he had received a
sign from God instructing him to lead his people to
freedom.
Turner’s group killed nearly 60 people before the local militia stopped their march.
In the process of the manhunt that followed, the local militia killed dozens of
African Americans. Turner was captured after six weeks. He and his associates were
executed.
Freedman – A person who has been
freed from slavery.
Life Under Slavery
Daily Life
You Decide: How
are southerners going
to react after Nat
Turner’s revolt?
Southern slave owners
are going to want
stricter
laws/restrictions for
their slaves.
Ways of Surviving
Lives of Free Blacks
Heavy Labor
Took comfort in their religion.
Suffered from persistent racial
discrimination.
Treated cruelly. Physical punishment, like
beatings and whippings.
Worked to maintain network of family and
friends.
Encouraged to migrate to Africa.
Barely enough food, clothing, and shelter.
Kept family traditions alive.
Worked together to establish churches and
schools.
Family members separated.
Tried to change and improve the lives of
enslaved African Americans.
Most slaves not allowed to learn to read.
The Fight Against Slavery
Many northerners objected to slavery on moral grounds.
By 1804, all states north of Maryland had passed legislation
to end slavery. In 1807, brining new slaves to any part of the
U.S. from Africa was banned.
A growing number of Americans opposed to slavery began
to speak out. Because they wanted slavery abolished, or
ended, they became known as abolitionists. The great reform
movement they led was the abolition movement.
A printer named William Lloyd Garrison, became
one of the leading abolitionists. In 1831, Garrison
began publishing his own antislavery newspaper,
The Liberator . Garrison was in favor of
emancipation, or the freeing of enslaved people.
At first he thought, like most abolitionists, that this should be
accomplished gradually over time to minimize economic and
social disruption. But Garrison soon took the radical step of
avocation immediate emancipation and extension of full
political and social rights to African Americans.
Founded by Garrison, in 1833, founded the American Anti-Slavery Society had over
150,000 members nationally by 1844. The Society printed anti-slavery pamphlets and
distributed them to churches and community organizations. They insisted that holding
slaves was counter to most Americans’ religious ideals.
Frederick Douglass (c.1818-1895)
Born a slave in Maryland and escaped to the North in 1838. Douglass’s
booming voice filled lecture halls with touching stories about the difficulty
of his life as a slave.
During the Civil War, Douglass, as an adviser to President Lincoln,
convinced the President to allow freedmen to fight for the North.
Douglass also lent strong support to the women’s movement.
Working Against Abolition
Southern slaveholders intensified their arguments in
support for slavery. They argued that:
1. Slavery was necessary because it formed the
foundation of the South’s agricultural economy.
2. Slavery benefited the North, since the North’s
textile and shipping industries depended upon
southern cotton.
3. Slavery was superior to the wage labor of the North.
4. Some southerners went even further, claiming that Christianity supported
slavery, that enslaved people could not survive without slaveholders. (Clearly
racist, but many people of the time believed them.)
Most northerners agreed with southern views on slavery.
Examples:
1. In 1835, William Lloyd Garrison was chased
through the streets of Boston by and angry
mob as a result of his antislavery views.
2. Grimké-Weld wedding, attended by both white
an black guests, infuriated local residents that
they burned down the antislavery meeting hall.
3. Abolitionist newspaper editor, Elijah Lovejoy’s
printing press was destroyed several time.
Lovejoy was killed in 1837 while defending the press.
Question #1
Question #2
White city workers would
have to compete with freed
blacks for jobs.
White industrialists would
have to compete with black
entrepreneurs.
Most white northerners disliked southerners, but they did not want to wrestle with the
problems of African Americans. They wanted to stay out of the controversy about
slavery. Some even supported the southern position on the Gag Rule.
Gag Rule – Rule lasting from 1836 to 1844 that banned debate
about slavery in Congress.
Debate Over Slavery
Against
For
Abolitionists believed that slavery was
immoral.
Slaveholders argued that slavery formed the
basis of the South’s economy.
Slavery was counter to religious beliefs.
The northern economy also depended on
slavery.
Slavery was better than wage labor.
Christianity supported slavery.
Slaves needed masters.
Religion & Reform
The Antislavery Movement
Women Work For Change
The early 1800s, American women lacked
many basic legal and economic
rights. The drive to reform American
society created by the Second Great
Awakening provided new opportunities for
women.
Sojourner Truth (c.1797-1843): One of the
most effective abolitionist lecturers, a former
slave from New York who held audiences
spellbound with her powerful speech and
arguments.
In the 1820s and 1830s, the Northeast was rapidly
industrializing. This provided the first real economic opportunity
in the nation’s history for women outside the home.
Thousands of young women went to work in the new mills and
factories. This gave women a small degree of economic
independence (although their wages were typically sent to their
husbands or fathers).
Women Begin the Fight for Rights
In the early 1800s many women argued that their lack of rights made them almost the
same as slaves. Women reformers began the women’s movement.
Women’s Movement – Movement working for greater rights and opportunities for
women of the early and middle 1800s.
Sarah Grimké argued that God made men and women equal and
therefore men and women should be treated equally. Building on her
sister’s ideas Angelina Grimké-Weld defended the rights of both
slaves and women on moral grounds.
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were two active reformers, supporting the
temperance and abolitionist causes. Mott had helped found the Amercan Anti-Slavery
Society. Stanton was married to a leading abolitionist, Henry Stanton. Both Elizabeth
and Henry were involved in women’s rights.
Seneca Falls Convention
In 1848, Mott and Stanton helped organize the
nation’s first Women’s Rights Convention in
Seneca Falls, NY. Marked the beginnings
of the women’s movement in the U.S.
The convention resulted in few concrete improvements in rights,
but it inspired generations of young women. Susan B. Anthony
was one of the leaders at the convention, who was firmly
committed to women’s suffrage.
In 1848, the state of NY passed a law, the Married Women’s
Property Act, guaranteeing many property rights for women.
Birth of the Women’s Rights Movement
Causes
1. Limited Rights.
2. Limited education
opportunities.
3. Changing
Attitudes.
Events
1. Birth of women’s
rights movement.
2. Women go to work.
3. Seneca Falls
Convention.
Effects
1. Reformers
published pamphlets
and books.
2. Growing support.
3. Married Women’s
Property Act in NY.