Antebellum Reform
Movements
McElhaney
APUSH
AP Outline
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12. Creating an American Culture
Cultural nationalism
Education reform/professionalism
Religion; revivalism
Utopian experiments: Mormons, Oneida Community
Transcendentalists
National literature, art, architecture
Reform crusades
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Feminism; roles of women in the nineteenth century
Abolitionism
Temperance
Criminals and the insane
Key Terms to Know and Memorize
1.
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16.
Romanticism
Hudson River School
James Fennimore
Cooper
Walt Whitman
Herman Melville
Edgar Allan Poe
Transcendentalists
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience
Utopian Societies
Brook Farm
New Harmony
Oneida Community
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Margaret Fuller
2nd Great Awakening
17. Protestant Revivalism
18. Shakers
19. Mormons
20. Charles Grandison
Finney
21. Temperance Crusade
22. Phrenology
23. Horace Mann
24. Asylum Movement
25. Dorothia Dix
Feminism/Women’s
Rights
17. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton
18. Lucretia Mott
19. Susan B. Anthony
31. Seneca Falls Convention
32. “Declaration of
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45.
Sentiments”
Abolitionism
Quakers
American Colonization
Society
Liberia
William Lloyd Garrison
Liberator
American Antislavery
Society
Frederick Douglass
North Star
Antiabolitionist violence
Amistad
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Reform=Change for Improvement
 Main impulses
 Faith in human nature
 Goodness of the
individual
 Desire for order and
control
 Desire to remake
society
 Religious/moral
impulses
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Romanticism
Transcendentalists
Utopian Societies
Second Great
Awakening
 Temperance Crusade
 Feminism
 Abolitionism
Second Great
Awakening
 Similar to First Great Awakening:
 Recall- Evangelists (Preachers) “Sinners in the
hands of and Angry God”
 Jonathan Edwards 1741
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Popular
Revival MeetingsCamps
WASPs
New Religious Sects Baptists and Methodists
Revivals increase popularity of reform
movements
Revivals = “giving new life,” to bring back to life specifically
Popular Religion (1830s)
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Second Great Awakening
Widespread Christian Movement
Revival meetings= new life
Emotional Sermons
Increased the amount of people participating
in churches (particularly women)
 Abolition and Temperance movement are
directly linked to 2nd Great Awakening
►Spread
Christian ideas of equality and morality.
N.I.N.E.S
Romanticism
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How do the following represent
concepts of American
Romanticism?
1. Hudson River School
2. James Fennimore
3.
4.
5.
6.
Cooper
Washington Irving
Walt Whitman
Herman Melville
Edgar Allan Poe
Romanticism
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Artistic movement
Emerges 1800-1820
Message “That would
express their nation’s
special virtues.”
Discovering American Art
as an American creation.
 Nostalgic- looking
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fondly back on earlier
times
Inspired by expression of
inner spirit
Nature and God together
Work to unleash capacity
for good and joy
Motifs in Romanticism
 The Nostalgic (sympathetic fondness)
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interpretation of the historic PAST
Individual REBELLION
Subjects from MYTH and FOLKLORE
Glorification of NATURE, faraway settings
Emotion-SENTIMENTALISM = Nobility of the
uncivilized man and simple life
Spiritual (GOTHIC themes – supernatural,
mysterious)
Romanticism in Painting
 Hudson River School
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(NY)
First Natural
Landscapes
Power of Nature
Sublime (feeling of
awe, feeling of
wonderment)
Grandeur of Nature
Nature offers promise
Sense of Nostalgia in
nature
Church
•Fredric
Church
Thomas
Cole
Thomas
Doughty
Asher
Durand
Romanticism in
Literature link
 Washington Irving (1809)
 Legend of Sleepy Hollow
 American theme, Dutch in
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New York, early America
James Fenimore Cooper
(1820s)
Wrote about American
wilderness
Leather Stocking Tales
“Last of the Mohicans”
Reflected American Ideals:
 Independent Individual
 Natural Inner Goodness
 Need for order
Romanticism in
Literature 2
 Walt Whitman (Link)
 “Poet of American
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Democracy”
NYC
Themes
Celebrated Democracy
Spirit of the Individual
Liberation of individual
Pleasures of the Flesh
American Spirit
Emotional and Physical
Release
Personal fulfillment
Homosexual
Leaves of Grass
Greatest collection
“When Lilacs Last in
the dooryard bloom’d”
Lincoln tribute
Captain My Captain
about Lincoln’s
Assassination
 Stop this day and night with me, and you shall
possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun —
there are millions of suns left,
You shall no longer take things at second or third
hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead,
nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor
take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from
yourself.
Romanticism in Literature 3
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Herman Melville (link)
NY, 1819
Best of his era
Moby Dick pub 1851
Human spirit was
troubled
 Self Destructive
 Man against nature
Romanticism in
Literature 4
•Edgar Allen Poe (link)
•Died 1849
•Poems and stories
•Sad and Macabre
•1845 the Raven
•Theme of individuals
rising above to see
deeper world of spirit
and emotion
Poe exposes… “the
underside of the American
dream of the self-made
man and showed the price
of materialism and
excessive competition -loneliness, alienation, and
images of death-in-life.”
Transcendentalists (Link)
 Emerges out of Romanticism
 New England
 Reaction against traditional Logic and
Enlightenment- non-conformist values
 Independent thinking
 Referred to reason as the ability to grasp
beauty and truth through--  Instinct and Emotion
 (the highest human faculties)
More Transcendentalism
 TRANSCENDENTALISM = a philosophy that asserts the
primacy of the SPIRITUAL over the MATERIAL
and EMPIRICAL
 According to Kant, there are some ideas and aspects of
knowledge which are beyond what the senses can
perceive,
 but are INTUITIONS of the mind itself – he named them
TRANSCENDENTAL FORMS
 The TRANSCENDENT is the fundamental reality
 The ultimate truth transcends the physical
world
Transcendentalists
and Nature
 Nature was the source of
deep Human inspiration
 Helps individuals see truth
within their souls
 Genuine Spirituality come
through communion with
nature
Super individualism was at their core.
 Philosophically though, there was a center and it was about the
notion of spontaneous reason.
 people are capable of discovering a truth solely on the basis of
intuition.
 Walter Harding, in The Days of Henry Thoreau, says Kant and Hegel
argued that there is a body of knowledge within man, innate, and
that this knowledge transcended the senses, thus
Transcendentalism.
 This knowledge was the voice of God within Man. It was central to
the Transcendentalists' belief that the child was born with an ability
to tell right from wrong. His moral sense became calloused as he
grew and listened to the world rather than that inner voice.
Particularly Alcott called for a return to a childish innocence and for
one to heed the voice of God within.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (link)
 Leader, Unitarian Minister, devoted to
Transcendentalism
 Wrote Essays, Lectures, Very Popular
Advocated the
commitment
of the
individual to
full
exploration of
the inner
capacities.
Emerson: the Nationalist
 Wanted cultural Independence
 1837 “The American Scholar”
 American dependence on culture & art is
over
 Truth & beauty can be derived from
instinct & creative genius
 “Let the single man plant himself
indomitably on his instincts there abide.
And a huge world will come round to him.”
R.W. Emerson Essay “Nature” 1836
 In the quest for Self-Fulfillment
 Individuals should work for Communion
with Nature
 “In the woods, we return to reason and
faith… Standing on the bare ground my
head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted
into infinite space, all mean egotism
vanishes… I am part and particle of God.”
RW Emerson: essay 1841 “Self
Reliance”
 Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of
your own mind”
 Self Reliance:
 was a quest for unity of the Universe
 The wholeness of god
 The great spiritual force/essence of spiritual
soul
 Each person has innate capacity to find
divinity personally
Henry David
Thoreau
 Transcendentalist
 Repudiated repressive forces
 Individuals should:
 Work for self-realization
 Resist conformity
 Should respond to own instincts
 Walden- in the Concord (Mass) Woods
 Most famous book
 Lived alone for 2 years
Thoreau
 “I went to the woods because I wished to
live deliberately, to confront only the
essential facts of life and see if I could not
learn what It had to teach.
 And not when I came to die I discover that
I had not lived”
Thoreau
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Went to jail briefly
Refused to pay a Poll Tax
Protested Slavery
1849: Essay “Resistance to Civil Government”
An individual’s personal morality has first claim
on his actions
 Government that violated personal morality had
no legitimate authority
 An individual response should be
 Civil Disobedience or Passive Resistence
Utopian Societies, Brook Farm,
New Harmony, Oneida Community, Morman
 Utopian movements are radical
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manifestations of the reform impulse.
They have the common vision to remake
society in a “more perfect way”
Communal characteristics
Separate from mainstream society
Cooperative
Utopian Movements
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Brook Farm
Massachusetts 1841-47
Transcendentalists
Individual strives for SelfRealization
 Communal
 Leisure is key
 New Harmony
 Robert Owen
 “A village of cooperation”
 Oneida Community 1848
 NY
 Rejected traditional family
and marriage values
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Oneida Community
 Oneida Community
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1848
NY
John Humphrey
Noyes
Rejected traditional
family and marriage
values
All residents were
married to all other
residents
 No permanent
conjugal ties
 Sexual behavior was
monitored to prevent
abuse.
 Children raised
communally
 Liberation from the
demands of male lust.
 Voluntary
 No children born into Shakerism
 Contact between men and women
Shakers
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Religious extremists
Re-defined traditional sexuality
Founded 1770s
Northeast + Northwest 1840s
“Shaking” ecstatic movementwould “shake themselves free
from sin” while performing a
loud chant.
 Commitment to Celibacy!?
was limited
 Social discipline was important
A view of Shaker Meeting from 1885. A photographer
from the Poland Spring Hotel took this image. The
Shakers are seated in the front benches. The
spectators and guests from the Poland Spring Hotel
are in the back rows.
Mormons
 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
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(LDS)
Joseph Smith (prophet for Mormons)
1830s Book of Mormon
Translation of set of Golden Tablets
Ancient Civilization in America (one of lost tribes
of Israel)
Dark Skin = Sin
Story of “American Hebrews”
Joseph Smith
Brigham Young
Mormons Continued
 Smith creates the movement and obtains
converts
 Rigid way of life:
 Polygamy
 Secrecy
 Life Style (very prescriptive, foods, behavior)
 New York, Illinois,
 Smith Arrested and killed by mob
 Brigham Young takes the 12000 converts
WEST to Utah
Temperance= Movement Against
Alcohol (link)
 Religious based Social Reform Movement
 Crusade
 “The church must take… on subject of
Temperance, the moral reform, all the
subjects of practical morality.”
 Crime, disorder, poverty caused by
alcoholism
 Drinking was especially a problem for
Women- husband abuse them, and kids,
and drink the money.
Temperance (Really good link)
 1826 American Society for the Promotion of
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Temperance
Preached abstinence
Large meetings
“Going on the Wagon”
Will later evolve into national movement
Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1878
Anti-Saloon League 1880s
Eventually, under Progressives, will lead to
prohibition of Alcohol 18th Amendment to the
Constitution last 1920-1933.
Education
 Public Education not
widely established
 Some progress in
Massachusetts
 New interest in Pub
Ed
 To create a stable
social
values=conformity
 Horace Mann is the
leader
“Train up a child in the
way he should go, and
when he is old he will
not depart from it.”
Education
 Mann
 “An educated electorate is
essential to the working of a
free Political system.”
 Education “only way to
counter…the tendency to
domination of capital and
servility of labor.”
 Advocated protestant valuesthrift, order, discipline,
punctuality, respect for
authority
 Not wide spread change
comes from this movement.
Medical Reforms
 Phrenology
 Foolish
 Germ Theory
Asylum (link) and
Prison Reforms
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Rehabilitation is the key
Asylum=mental health
Prison= criminals
Rise of the Penitentiary
“A place to cultivate penitence”
Through discipline
Problem- Mentally ill and
criminals kept in terrible
conditions
Reform is key
 Dorothea Dix
 Some progress
Feminism
 Women were active in reform
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and Revival- 2nd Great
Awakening
Temperance
Abolition
Women’s rights
Many women begin to call for
women’s rights
“Men and women were
created equal. They are both
moral and accountable beings
and whatever is right for man
to do is right for women to do.”
Women’s Rights
Movement
 Lucretia Mott
 Elizabeth Cady
Stanton
 Susan B. Anthony
 Strong connection
between Women’s
Rights and Abolition
movement
Seneca Falls
Convention 1848 (link)
 Elizabeth Cady
Stanton
 Susan B. Anthony
 Lucretia Mott
 Fredrick Douglass
 Declaration of
Sentiments
 Emulated Declaration
of Independence