Era of Reforms
th
America’s Early 19
Century Culture
Unit IVC
AP United States History
The Second Great Awakening
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Religious revivalist reaction to
Enlightenment principles and
conservative Puritan ideals
beginning in 1790s and into early
19th century
Educated ministers promote
salvation for all and life void of
vices
Revivals meetings
 New York’s Burned-Over District
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Protestant domination by Baptists
and Methodists
Millennialism and Seventh-Day
Adventist Church
Inspired social reform movements
 Temperance
Mormons and Church of the LatterDay Saints
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Joseph Smith, founder in
1830, gathered flock from
New York to Illinois
Brigham Young led
Mormons west and
eventually settled in Utah
Territory
Book of Mormon aka
Scripture
Open canon, exaltation,
polygamy lead to
harassment
Communal Societies
 Expansion provided opportunities
for development of utopias
 Fourier Phalanxes
► Tight-knit
community based in a
phalanx-type structure
 Brook Farm
► Share
equally in labor and leisure
 Robert Owen’s New Harmony
► Equality
in labor
 Shakers
► Founded
by Jane Wardley and
Mother Ann Lee as millenial
society
► common ownership, shared
rewards, strict celibacy, against
vices, “separate but equal”
 Oneida Community
► Founded
by John Humphrey
Noyes
► “perfectionists,” married to all,
children raised communally
Reform Movements
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Temperance
 Reform movement which gathered
political support against society’s vices
(alcoholism, gambling, prostitution)
 American Temperance Society (1826)
► Founded
by Lyman Beecher
► Abstinence from liquor
 Washingtonians (1840)
► Founded
by alcoholics who focused on
individuals
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Rehabilitation and Institutions
 Dorothea Dix and asylums/mental
institutions
 Educational and rehabilitation for
handicapped
 Prisons and penal societies
► Improve
conditions
► Provide rehabilitation and work
programs
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Education
 Support for public
education
► Larger
working and
middles class needs to
be informed and trained
 Horace Mann
► State
board of education
in Massachusetts
► Free public education
with trained teachers
► Teach democracy and
social values
 Private and religious
schools incorporate
morality in literacy
 Noah Webster
► Standardized
American
English with dictionary
(1828)
Health, Literacy, Entertainment in America
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Home Design and
Furnishing
 Visual representation of
social classes
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Diseases
 Cholera in 1830s
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Newspapers
 Penny press
 Associated Press (AP)
(1846)
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Fiction
Lectures
Theaters
 Performing arts increases
with urbanization
 Minstrel shows – blackface
Transcendentalism
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Spiritual gain over materialism
Individual over the organization/group
Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Self-Reliance (1841)
► “Nothing
is at last sacred, but the integrity of
your own mind.”
► Communion with the unity of the universe;
divinity of the individual
 The American Scholar (1837)
► Despite
cultural heritage, instinctive creative
genius of individual could lead to greatness
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Henry David Thoreau (Walden, On Civil
Disobedience)
 “I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of
life, and see if I could not what it had to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived.”
 Passive resistance – a public refusal to obey
unjust laws
America’s Culture Changes
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Romanticism
 Beyond reason, seek understanding and expression of emotion and spirit
 Associated with growth of nationalism
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Paintings
 Portraits of ordinary American life
 American landscapes
 Hudson River School
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Discovery, exploration, settlement themes
Human co-existence with nature; nature the manifestation of God
Architecture
 Classical-style construction
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Literature
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Transition from European/British style to more American style
Reflects Romanticism with emotional and natural themes
Washington Irving: Rip van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
James Fenimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans, Deerslayer
Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables
Herman Melville: Moby-Dick
Edgar Allen Poe: The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of
Usher, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado
 Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
 Emily Dickinson: Poems
Hudson River School – Thomas Cole
American Architecture
U.S. Capitol - c. 1820
Parthenon - Athens
New York Customs House - 1842
Pantheon - Rome
Themes in American Literature
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The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
 tragedy of encroachment of European/American civilization on Natives
 Use of nature as a form of developing characters
 Spirituality
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The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
 Satire on America’s puritanical lifestyle and conformity
 Sin more as an opportunity for growth rather than a hindrance
 Strength of the individual over the community
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Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
 No matter how much knowledge acquired, no way to fully understand the
force of nature
 Captain Ahab views Moby-Dick as embodiment of evil and his vengeance
leads to his destruction
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Edgar Allen Poe
 Fear is the strongest emotion
 Frowned upon optimism