AP United States History
Mr. M. Pecot
Bailey, Chapter 15: The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790-1860
I. Religious Revival a) The state of religion in America by 1850
1. church attendance
2. declining orthodoxy
-
The Age of Reason (1794) by Thomas Paine
-
Unitarianism
3. The Second Great Awakening
- camp meetings
Peter Cartwright
-
-
Charles Grandison Finney
4. New Denominations
-
"Burned-Over District": W. NY
Millerites/Adventists
-
-
Economic/Class/Regional distinctions in religions
- division of N/S Baptists, N/S Methodists, N/S Presbyterians
5. Mormonism
-
Joseph Smith
Mormon exodus from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois
-
-
Brigham Young conflicts between Mormons and the US government
-
II. The Free School Movement & Educational Reform a) The free school movement
1. Rationales behind public schools
2. Relation of free schooling to the New Democracy b) Educational reform
1. Weaknesses of public schools in the early 19 th century
2. The state of American education in 1860
3. Educational reformers:
-
Horace Mann & educational reform in Massachusetts
Noah Webster, "School Master of the Republic"
-
-
William H. McGuffey c) Reforms in Higher Learning in America, 1790-1860
1. New colleges in the south and west
-
UNC
-
U. Va.
2. Reforms in women's education
-
-
-
Emma Willard & the Troy Female Seminary
Oberlin College
Mount Holyoke Seminary
3. Growing public access to ideas:
- increase in libraries
-
Lyceum Movement
- new magazines and publications
III. Social Reform Movements, 1790-1860 a) The upshoot of reform movements b) the reformers mindset c) significant reform movements of the 19 th c.
1. debt-imprisonment reform
2. criminal code reforms
3. reforms in treatment of the insane
-
Dorothea Dix
4. pacifist movements
5. Temperance movements (v. Demon Rum)
- the problem of alcohol
-
American Temperance society
Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There (1854)
-
-
2 strategies of the temperance movement
Neal S. Dow
-
-
Maine Law (1851) d) Women’s Rights Movement
1. The status of women in America: the “submerged sex” a. No vote, little protection, limited property rights b. Contrast with European women….scarcity in frontier communities elevates status c. Economic changes increase gender distinctions:

i. Women = physically/emotionally weak, but artistic, refined and moral….republican motherhood…promoted by women like Catherine Beecher ii. Men = powerful but crude…
2. Growing independence 1790-1860 a. By 1860, 10% of adult women do not marry b. Expanding women’s “sphere” i. Reform crusades (esp. abolition and temperance) ii. Women’s Rights Movement
1. Leaders a. Lucretia Mott b. Elizabeth Cady Stanton c. Susan B. Anthony d. Sarah and Angela Grimke
2. Pioneers a. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell b. Margaret Fuller c. Seneca Declaration of Rights (1848) i. Seneca Falls Convention, Seneca, NY d. Women’s rights movement overshadowed by abolitionism and war. e) Utopian Communes
3. New Harmony, Indiana 1825 a. Robert Owen – Scot, textile manufacturer b. Goal = communitarian life
4. Brook Farm, Mass. 1841 a. Experiment in “plain living and high thinking” -- intellectuals living in cooperation b. Inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852)
5. Oneida Colony, NY 1848 a. Free love! (Complex marriage), birth control, eugenics, and nice silverware b. Abandons polygamy and communism in 1879.
6. Shakers, 1770s-1940 a. Mother Ann Lee b. Religious communities promoting simple living, worship, and asexualism – almost monastic
IV: Art and Culture 1790-1860
A.) Science and Learning
1. Early Republic – practical science a. Jefferson – improved plow b. Nathaniel Bowditch – practical navigation; Matthew Maury – charts ocean currents and winds
2. John J. Audubon – Birds of North America
3. Medicine – Patent medicines, blood letting, fad diets
B.) Neoclassical Architecture
1. Reflects “republican” heritage
2. Thomas Jefferson – Monticello; Quadrangle at the University of Virginia
C.) Artists
1. Painting and Sculpture – not highly valued in the early republic a. Portraiture (Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, Charles Wilson Peale) in the 18 th century
• Idealized portraits of heroes of the Revolution b. Landscape art of the Hudson River School during nationalism of 1812
2. Photography a. Daugerreotype – early form of photography.
3. Music a. Minstrel shows – white actors in blackface singing “darky” tunes.
• Dixie
•
Jump Jim Crow
• Old Folks at Home
D.) Literature
1. Early Republic a. Practical literature: Political essays and pamphlets – Common Sense, Federalist, speeches of Daniel Webster b. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1818) first book of reknown.
2. Post-1812 a. Knickerbocker Group – first group of American writers to gain prestige

•
Washington Irving – The Sketch Book
• James Fenimore Cooper – Leatherstocking Tales, Last of the Mohicans
•
William Cullen Bryant – poet – “Thanotopsis” b. Transcendentalists
• “truth transcends the senses” – reflection & introspection will put individuals in touch with highest truths…
• believed in individualism, self-reliance, self-discipline, dignity of individual, resistance to authority
• Ralph Waldo Emerson – essays – “Self-Reliance”
• Henry David Thoreau – Walden , “Civil Disobedience” (jailed for refusing to pay taxes in protest of the Mexican
War)
•
Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass – breaks the “rules” of poetry (stanzas, rhymes and regular meter)
3. Poets a. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – poet,
• “Evangeline,” “Song of Hiawatha,” “Courtship of Miles Standish”
•
Only American poet honored in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey b. John Greenleaf Whitier – poet laureate of Anti-slavery crusade
•
“The Branded Hand” c. James Russell Lowell –
• Biglow Papers – anti-Mexican war, criticizes Polk administration d. Emily Dickinson
•
Reclusive and morose…
4. Other notable novelists a. Louisa May Alcott – Little Women b. Edgar Allen Poe – “ The Gold Bug”, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Raven” c. Nathaniel Hawthorne – Scarlet Letter d. Herman Melville – Moby Dick