Ferment of Reform,
1820-1860
Second Great Awakening
Second Great Awakening
• Early 19th Century religious revivals
– Calvinist reaction against rationalism
– 1795, Reverend Timothy Dwight, president Yale
College began a series of campus revivals
• 1832, Presbyterian minister Charles Finney,
upstate New York
–
–
–
–
More radical form of revivalism
Appealed to people’s emotions & fear
All were free to be saved through faith & hard work
Western New York “burned-over district” from “fireand-brimstone” revivals
Second Great Awakening
• South
– Itinerant Baptist & Methodist preachers like
Peter Cartwright
– 1850, Baptists & Methodists largest protestant
denominations
• Millennialism
– Widespread belief that world was about to
end
– William Miller
• Predicted world’s end on October 21, 1844
• Millerites would become Seventh-Day Adventists
Mormons
• Founded by Joseph Smith, 1830, in NY
• Based on Book of Mormon
• Connected Indians to lost tribes of Israel
– Gained followers moved from NY to OH, MO,
& IL where Smith was murdered
• Brigham Young moved Mormons to Utah
• Belief in polygamy set U.S. government
against them
The Transcendentalists
• Questioned the doctrines of established
•
•
•
•
•
churches & capitalistic habits of merchant class
Argued for a mystical & intuitive way of thinking
to discover one’s inner self
Looked for the essence of God in nature
Challenged materialism; artistic expression more
important than pursuit of wealth
Highly individualistic; viewed organized
institutions as unimportant
Supported a variety of reforms; especially
antislavery
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
• Popular lecturer
• Wrote essays & poems
• Urged Americans not to imitate European
culture, but to create an American culture
• His essays & poems argued for selfreliance, independent thinking, & the
primacy of spiritual manners over material
ones
• Leading critic of slavery & Union supporter
during the Civil War
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
• Conducted 2-year experiment of living in
woods alone to discover essential truths
about life
– Walden (1854)
• Advocated non-violent protest in essay
“On Civil Disobedience”
– Sent to jail for refusing to pay a tax that
might be used to fight an “immoral” war—the
Mexican War (1846-1848)
Brook Farm
• 1841, George Ripley, protestant minister
• Communal experiment on Brook Farm
• To achieve “a more natural union between
intellectual and manual labor.”
• Some leading intellectuals lived there
– Emerson, feminist Margaret Fuller, &
Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Ended in 1849 after a bad fire & due to
heavy debts
Communal Experiments

Shakers





6000 members by 1840s
Held property in common
Men & women kept separate; marriage & sex forbidden
Died out by mid-1900s due to lack of members
New Harmony, Indiana



Founded by industrialist & reformer Robert Owen
Hoped to solve inequity & alienation caused by Industrial
Revolution
Failed because of financial problems & disagreements
Communal Experiments

Oneida, New York





1848 by John Humphrey Noyes
Members shared property & marriage partners
Critics attacked as sinful experiment in “free love”
Community prospered economically by producing highquality silverware
Fourier Phalanxes, 1840s


French socialist Charles Fourier advocated sharing work &
living arrangements called Fourier Phalanxes
Movement died out quickly
Arts & Literature
• Painting
– Genre painting—portraying the everyday
life of ordinary people
• George Caleb Bingham, William S. Mount
• Thomas Cole, Frederick Church
– Hudson River School
» Expressed romantic age’s fascination with the
natural world
• Architecture
– American architects adapted classical
Greek styles to glorify the democratic
spirit
Arts & Literature
• Literature
– After War of 1812
American authors
with American
themes
– Washington Irving,
James Fenimore
Cooper, Nathanial
Hawthorne, Herman
Melville
Reforming Society
Temperance


1820 rate of alcohol consumption 5 gallons liquor/per person
1826 American Temperance Society founded
–

1840 Washingtonians, recovering alcoholics
–





Used moral arguments to persuade drinkers to take a pledge of
total abstinence
Argued alcoholism a disease that needed treatment
1840s over a million members of temperance societies
German & Irish immigrants opposed but lacked political power
1851 Maine first of 13 states to prohibit liquor before Civil War
Lost steam prior to and during Civil War
Gained again in 1870s—Women’s Christian Temperance Union
–
18th Amendment in 1919
Reforms for the disabled & prisoners

Dorothea Dix horrified that mentally ill were
in prison with criminals
–
–



Dedicated her life to improving life for mentally ill
1840s she convinced many state legislatures to
build mental hospitals
Thomas Gallaudet founded school for the
deaf
Dr. Gridley Howe school for the blind
Penitentiaries replaced prisons experimented
with solitary confinement, structure, &
discipline
Public Education

Horace Mann leader of the public
school movement (MA)



Advocated improving schools,
compulsory attendance, longer school
year, & better teacher preparation
1840s movement for tax-supported
schools spread to other states
William Holmes McGuffey

McGuffey Readers textbooks that taught
reading along with moral instruction


Extolled virtues of hard work, punctuality, &
sobriety
Catholics started private schools in
response to the Protestant tone of public
schools
Public Education


1830s Protestant denominations
founded several new colleges
Some colleges began accepting
women
Changing American Family
Changing American Family
Cities & industrialization changed
roles of men & women
Men worked; women stayed home
Birthrate fell; size of families
diminished
Cult of domesticity
Idealized view of women as moral
leaders in the home & teacher of
children
Women’s rights movement
Women involved in anti-slavery movement
discriminated against by men in the
movement
Sarah & Angelina Grimke objected
Angelina wrote Letter on the Condition of Women and
the Equality of the Sexes (1837)
Lucretia Mott & Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Seneca Falls Convention, NY (1848)
1st women’s rights convention in U.S.
“Declaration of Sentiments”
All men & women created equal
Listed women’s grievances
Women’s rights movement
Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B.
Anthony
Leaders after Seneca Falls
Equal voting, legal & property rights for
women
1850s—Civil War women’s movement
overshadowed by slavery
Antislavery Movement
American Colonization Society,
1817
Free slaves & transport them to Africa
 Appealed to moderate antislavery
reformers & politicians
 Large number of whites wanted to remove
blacks from U.S. society
 1822 established Monrovia, Liberia
 1820-1860 12,000 blacks moved to Africa
while # of slaves grew from 1.5 to 4
million

American Antislavery Society

William Lloyd Garrison
– 1831 The Liberator
– Beginning of the radical abolitionist movement
– Called for the immediate abolition of slavery
1833 Garrison & others founded American
Antislavery Society
 Garrison burned Constitution as a
proslavery document

Liberty party
Garrison’s radicalism led to a split in the
abolitionist movement
 1840 Liberty party was formed for political
action as opposed to a moral crusade

– James Birney candidate for president, 1840 &
1844
– One campaign pledge: to bring an end to
slavery by political & legal means
Black Abolitionists

Escaped slaves & free blacks outspoken
critics of slavery
– Frederick Douglass
– Harriet Tubman
– David Ruggles
– Sojourner Truth
– William Still

Many organized effort to assist fugitive
slaves
– Underground Railroad