“The Benevolent Empire”:
1825 - 1846
1.The Second
Great Awakening
“Spiritual Reform From Within”
[Religious Revivalism]
Social Reforms & Redefining the
Ideal of Equality
Asylum &
Penal Reform
The “Burned-Over” District
in Upstate New York
Utopian
Communities
Women’s
Rights
Temperance
Education
Revival
Meetin
g
The Second Great Awakening
• SALVATION = choice
• belief in perfectionism a perfect
society possible; follow God’s laws
• need to reform society to hasten the
Kingdom of God
Charles G. Finney
(1792 – 1895)
“soul-shaking” conversion
• reaction to threats to traditional values
and norms
liberalizing religions
industrialization and urbanization
The Mormon
“Trek”
The Mormons
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
Joseph Smith
(1805-1844)
1816 American Bible Society Founded
Brigham Young
(1801-1877)
e 1823 --> Golden Tablets
e Deseret community.
e 1830 --> Book of Mormon
e Salt Lake City, UT
e est. a
Mormon
theocracy
1
2. Temperance Movement
1826 - American Temperance Society
“Demon Rum”!
Annual
Consumption
of Alcohol
The Drunkard’s Progress
Neal Dow
temperance
first advocated
moderation
later,
progressed to
abstinence
Frances Willard
Dorothea
Dix
(18021887)
by 20th
century,
pushed
prohibition
The Beecher Family
3. Asylums and Penal
Reform
mentally ill no longer in
chains, poorhouses, or
basements new hospitals
and asylums
reduced # of cruel/
capital punishments
reduced debtor prisons
notion of prisoner reform
first penitentiary founded
in 1821 (Auburn, NY)
Cult of Domesticity =
Slavery
Great Awakening
inspired women to
2nd
The
improve society.
4. Women’s Rights
From the first glass to the grave, 1846
Early 19th c. Women…
1. were unable to vote.
“Separate Spheres”
and the
“Cult of Domesticity”
e A woman’s “sphere” was in the
home (it was a refuge from the
cruel world outside).
e Her role was to “civilize” her
husband and family.
What It Would Be Like If
Ladies Had Their Own Way?
2. had the legal status of a minor.
3. if single, could own her own property.
4. if married, had no control over her
property or her children.
5. couldn’t initiate divorce.
6. couldn’t make wills, sign a contract, or
bring suit in court without her husband’s
permission.
The Suffrage Movement
e inspired by
Jacksonianism
e Lowell Girls
demonstrated women’s
industrial ability
Lucy Stone
Angelina Grimké
Sarah Grimké
e Southern Abolitionists
e American Women’s
Suffrage Assoc.
e edited Woman’s Journal
e leadership abilities
(alongside men)
demonstrated in other
reform movements
Anthony &
Stanton
Mary Lyon
e women’s colleges
providing education
Emma Willard
2
The Suffrage Movement
Seneca Falls Declaration
5. Educational Reform
Religious Training Secular Education
1840 --> split within the abolitionist
movement over women’s role in it
e MA
always on the forefront
of public educational reform
* 1st state to establish tax
support for local public schools
e By
1860 every state had free, compulsory public
education to whites
* US had one of the highest literacy rates
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Lucretia Mott
1848 --> Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments
The McGuffey Eclectic
Readers
Horace Mann (17961859)“Father of
6. Utopian Communities
American Education”
e children were clay
in the hands
of teachers and school officials
e children should be “molded”
e Used religious parables
into a state of perfection
e discouraged corporal punishment
e established state teachertraining programs
The Oneida Community
New York, 1848
e Millenarianism --> the
2nd
to teach “American values.”
e Teach middle class morality and respect for order.
e Teach “3
Rs” + “Protestant ethic” (frugality,
hard work, sobriety)
Secular Utopian
Communities
coming of Christ had
already occurred
e Humans were no longer
John Humphrey Noyes
(1811-1886)
obliged to follow the moral
rules of the past
all residents married
to each other
carefully regulated
“free love”
Individual
Freedom
alternative communities that
repudiated class divisions and
sexual norms
sought a more egalitarian social order
Brook Farm
West Roxbury, MA
Communal experiment of the
Transcendentalists where many
intellectuals resided temporarily
Demands of
Community Life
e spontaneity
e discipline
e self-fulfillment
e organizational
hierarchy
George Ripley
(1802-1880)
3
Robert Owen (1771-1858)
Original Plans for New Harmony,
IN
New Harmony,
IN
Utopian Socialist
“Village of Cooperation”
New Harmony in 1832
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalist
Intellectuals/Writers
(European Romanticism)
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
e “Transcend” the limits of intellect and allow the
emotions, the SOUL, to create an original
relationship with the Universe.
e launched lyceum movement
Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864)
(Concord, MA)
e “Liberation from understanding and the
cultivation of reasoning.”
e message of inner change, self-realization & selfreliance (anti-Enlightenment)
The Anti-Transcendentalist:
distorted view of human
nature and possibilities:
* The Blithedale Romance
Henry David
Thoreau
e accept the world as an
Nature
(1832)
e pursuit of the ideal led to a
Walden
Self-Reliance
(1854)
(1841)
“The American
Scholar” (1837)
Resistance to Civil
Government (1849)
imperfect place:
* Scarlet Letter
* House of the Seven
Gables
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