THE PURSUIT OF
PERFECTION
America: Past and Present
Chapter 12
The Rise of Evangelicalism
Separation of church and state gives all
churches the chance to compete for
converts
 Pious Protestants form voluntary
associations to combat sin, “infidelity”

The Second Great Awakening:
The Frontier Phase

Camp meetings contribute to frontier life
–
–
provide emotional religion
offer opportunity for social life
Camp meeting revivals convey intensely
personal religious message
 Camp meetings rarely lead to social
reform

The Second Great Awakening
in the North
In New England reformers defend
Calvinism against the Enlightenment
 Charles G. Finney rejects Calvinism to
preach free will
 Finney preaches in upstate New York
 Finney stresses revival techniques
 Revivals lead to organization of more
churches

From Revivalism to Reform
Northern revivals stimulate reform
 Middle-class participants adapt
evangelical religion to preserve
traditional values
 "The benevolent empire" of evangelical
reform movements alter American life

–
e.g. temperance movement cuts alcohol
consumption by more than fifty percent
Domesticity and Changes in
the American Family
New conception of family’s role in
society
 Child rearing seen as essential
preparation for self-disciplined Christian
life
 Women confined to domestic sphere
 Women assume crucial role within
home

Marriage for Love
Mutual love must characterize marriage
 Wives became more of a companion to
their husbands and less of a servant
 Legally, the husband was the
unchallenged head of the household

The Cult of Domesticity

"The Cult of True Womanhood"
–
–
places women in the home
glorifies home as center of all efforts to
civilize and Christianize society
Middle- and upper-class women
increasingly dedicated to the home as
mothers
 Women of leisure enter reform
movements

The Discovery of Childhood
Nineteenth-century child the center of
family
 Each child seen as unique, irreplaceable
 Ideal to form child’s character with
affection
 Parental discipline to instill guilt, not fear
 Train child to learn self-discipline

Institutional Reform
Domesticity to inform public institutions
 Schools continue what family begins
 Asylums, prisons mend family’s failures

The Extension of Education
Public schools expand rapidly 1820-1850
 Working class sees as means to advance
 Middle-class reformers see as means for
inculcating values of hard work,
responsibility
 Horace Mann argues schools save
immigrants, poor children from parents’ bad
influence
 Many parents believe public schools
alienate children from their parents

Discovering the Asylum
Poor, criminal, insane seen as lacking
self-discipline
 Harsh measures to promote
rehabilitation

–
–
solitary confinement of prisoners
strict daily schedule
Public support for rehabilitation skimpy
 Prisons, asylums, poorhouses become
warehouses for the unwanted

Reform Turns Radical
Most reform aims to improve society
 Some radical reformers seek
destruction of old society, creation of
perfect social order

Divisions in the Benevolent
Empire

Radical perfectionists impatient by
1830s, split from moderate reform
–
–
–
temperance movement
peace movement
antislavery movement
Moderates seek gradual end to slavery
 Radicals demand immediate
emancipation
 1833--American Anti-Slavery Society

The Abolitionist Enterprise:
Theodore Dwight Weld
Weld an itinerant minister converted by
Finney
 Adapted his revivalist techniques to
abolition
 Successful mass meetings in Ohio, New
York

The Abolitionist Enterprise:
Public Reception
Appeal to hard-working small town folk
 Opposition in cities & near Mason-Dixon
line
 Opposition from the working class

–
–

dislike blacks
fear black economic and social competition
Solid citizens see abolitionists as
anarchists
The Abolitionist Enterprise:
Obstacles


Abolitionists hampered by in-fighting
William Lloyd Garrison disrupts
movement by associating with radical
reform efforts
– urged abolitionists to abstain from
participating in the political process
– also got involved in women’s rights
movement

Some abolitionists help form the Liberty
Party in 1840
Black Abolitionists

Former slaves related the horrible
realities of bondage
– prominent figures included Frederick
Douglass and Sojourner Truth
Black newspapers, books, and
pamphlets publicized abolitionism to a
wider audience
 Blacks were also active in the
Underground Railroad

From Abolitionism to Women's
Rights
Abolitionism open to women’s participation
 Involvement raises awareness of women’s
inequality
 Seneca Falls Convention in 1848

–
–
–
Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
organize
prompted by experience of inequality in
abolition movement
begins movement for women’s rights
Radical Ideas & Experiments:
Utopian Communities

Utopian socialism
– Inspired by Robert Owen, Charles Fourier
– New Harmony, Indiana—Owenite
– Fourierite phalanxes

Religious utopianism
– Shakers
– Oneida Community
Utopian Communities Before the
Civil War
Radical Ideas & Experiments:
Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Margaret Fuller
 George Ripley

– founded cooperative community at Brook
Farm

Henry David Thoreau
Counterpoint on Reform

Reform encounters perceptive critics
– Nathaniel Hawthorne allegorically refuted
perfectionist movements

Reform prompts necessary changes in
American life