The Pursuit of Perfection
The attempt to reach “perfection”
individually and as a society during
the antebellum era
I. The Second Great Awakening
A. Causes and Theology
• Possible origins of this
second major religious
revival
• “Millennialism”
• Free moral agency or “Free
will”
• This is an Arminian revival,
not a Calvinistic one like the
first Great Awakening
• “Perfectionism”
• Competing Religious Belief
Systems
B. The Frontier Phase
• Location: Kentucky
frontier
• Camp Meeting setting
• Bizarre physical
behavior
• Denominations
affected
• No impact on societal
reform
C. The Northern Phase
• “Burned-over” District
• Less emotional than the
frontier
• Spawns Reform Societies
• Began at Yale College
• Ministry of Lyman
Beecher
• Ministry of Charles
Finney
II. New Voluntary Associations
Produced
• Attack on societal evil—
religious roots
• Attempt to baptize the
market revolution
• The range of voluntary
reform societies
• The success of the
American Temperance
Society
• Reform societies used
religious techniques to
advance their causes
III. Changes in the American
Family
A. Marriage and Gender Issues
• The triumph of marriage for
love
• More affectionate
relationships between
husbands and wives
• The “cult of true
womanhood”
• Increasing division of the
work places
-- “doctrine of the two
spheres”
• An era of deep female
friendships
B. Parenting and Childhood
• The cosmic importance of
parenting
• Childhood seen as a distinct
stage of life
• More intimacy between
parents and children—
especially children and
mothers
• Smaller families were the
norm
• 25% drop in family size
between 1800 and 1850
IV. Institutional Reform
A. Free Public Schools
• Free public schools
increased dramatically
between 1820-1850
• The role of moral
indoctrination
• The appeal of education to
lower classes
• Opponents of free public
schools
• Key leaders in this public
education movement
B. Special Institutions for Social
Misfits
• “Perfecting” impulse
• Colonial treatment of
these “special need”
individuals
• John Locke’s Tabula Rasa
model
• Special Antebellum
Institutions emerged
• Growing problems and
important reformers
V. The Emergence of
Abolitionism
• Unachieved “perfection”
leads to division within
reform societies
• Early approaches to
ending slavery
--American Colonization
Society (1817)
• William Lloyd Garrison
--American Anti-Slavery
Society (1833)
--The Liberator
V. Abolitionism (cont.)
• Theodore Weld and the
Grimke Sisters
• The geography of
abolitionism
• Internal problems for the
American Anti-Slavery
Society
• Open split in the Society
by 1840
• The creation of the Liberty
Party (1840)
VI. Early American Feminist
Movement
• Grows out of
abolitionism
• Important Early
Leaders in the
Feminist Movement
• The Seneca Falls
Convention (1848)
• Popular signs of
protest
VII. Radical Experiments in
Perfection
• Utopian Socialism
--Robert Owen
• Transcendentalism
--Brook Farm (1841)
• The “water cure” and the
diet of Sylvester Graham
• Phrenology
• Popularity of Séances and
“spirit-rapping”