Explain how the Second Great Awakening, the ideal of Jacksonian Democracy and American individualism had on the effect of reform movements 1820 – 1860.
American individualism
- Individualism
o Transcendentalist literature
o Individualist literature
o Utopian societies
o Painting, architecture, literature.
Second Great Awakening
o ¾ of 23 million Americans 1850 Church attendance.
o For a long time rationalist ideas of French Revolutionary era softened older orthodoxy.
§ Demonstrated through Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason.
§ Founding Fathers embraced Deism which relied more on reason than revelation.
§ New Unitarian faith.
o In response to liberalism in religion = Second Great Awakening
§ Spread through “camp meetings”
§ Methodists and Baptists membership goes up
§ Peter Cartwright famous Methodist “circuit rider”
§ Charles Grandison Finney massive revivals.
· Encouraged women to pray aloud in public
· Denounced alcohol and slavery.
· Oberlin College a hotbed of revivalist activity and abolitionism.
o Feminization of religion, in terms of church and theology.
§ Women majority of new church members
§ Preached gospel of female spiritual worth, offered women active role in bringing to family God
o Fragmentation of faiths.
§ Sermonizers preaching “hellfire and brimstone” where New England came to be known as the Burned-Over District.
§ Creation of Millerites a prominent movement.
o Widened lines between classes and religions
§ More prosperous and conservative in the East little touched by revivalism
· Included Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians.
§ Methodists and Baptists grew with evangelistic fervor.
o Utopian societies
§ Joseph Smith founded Book of Mormon and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons).
· Created sect which was largely individualistic.
· Drilled militia for defensive purposes.
· Brigham Young led Mormons to Utah.
o Led to many small, denominational, liberal arts colleges.
§ Academically anemic and focused too much on religion.
§ Resulted in first state-supported universities beginning with North Carolina.
§ University of Virginia founded by Thomas Jefferson dedicated to university freedom from religious or political constraints and emphasized on modern languages and sciences.
§ Women’s education with Emma Willard establishing Troy Female Seminary.
· Oberlin College opened doors to women and blacks.
· Mary Lyon established Mount Holyoke Seminary
§ General people wanted more knowledge.
· More tax-supported libraries.
· Lecturers taught masses through lyceum lecture associations.
· Talks including Ralph Waldo Emerson
o Optimistic promises of Second Great Awakening inspired many to counter evil.
o Prison reform
§ 1830 many people in debtors prisons sometimes for owing less than a dollar.
§ When laborer won the ballot, asserted himself, state legislatures gradually abolished these prisons.
· Number of capital offenses reduced, brutal punishments such as whipping and branding eliminated.
· Refreshing ideas led to creation of reformatories, houses of corrections and penitentiaries.
§ Dorothea Dix fought for better conditions for treating the insane. Led the way to better treatment of those afflicted with mental illnesses.
Jacksonian Ideals:
o Schooling reforms
§ Tax-supported public education triumphed between 1825 and 1850
§ Gaining manhood suffrage for whites in Jackson’s day
· Cried for free education.
· Age of Common Man
§ Taught the 3 Rs
§ Reform by Horace Mann campaigned for more and better schoolhouses, longer terms, higher pay for teachers.
· Aided by Noah Webster’s standardization of American language
· Aided by William H. McGuffey’s publication of McGuffey Readers
o Abolitionist movement
§ Heavy drinking decreased efficiency of labor.
§ Fouled sanctity of family
§ American Temperance Society
· Implored drinkers to sign temperance pledge, organized “Cold Water Army”
· Use of pictures, pamphlets for abolition.
· T.S. Arthur’s Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There.
· Stressed “temperance” or control.
· Prominent leader: Neal S. Dow “Father of Prohibition”.
· Sponsored Maine Law which prohibited manufacture and sale of alcohol.
o Dozen or so states passed various prohibitory laws, but repealed or declared unconscitutional.
o Fighting for women
§ Wanted to get out of cult domesticity
§ Catherine Beecher urged women to seek employment as teachers
§ Touched off by the evangelical spirit that offered the promise of earthly reward for human endeavors.
§ Lucretia Mott and antislavery convention in London 1840 not recognized.
§ Elizabeth Cady Stanton advocate suffrage for women.
§ Susan B. Anthony militant lecturer for female rights.
§ Elizabeth Blackwell first female graduate of medical college.
§ Margaret Fuller edited transcendentalist journal The Dial and empowered role of women when bringing unity to republican government in Italy.
§ Grimke Sisters championed antislavery.
§ Amelia Bloomer against female attire and “bloomers”.
§ Seneca Falls Convention (1848) Stanton read “Declaration of Sentiments” which in spirit of Declaration of Independence declaring that “all men and women are created equal”.
· Launched modern women’s rights movement
§ Women gradually being admitted to colleges, some states like Mississippi permitting wives to own property.
American individualism
o Utopian and indivudliastic spirit of the age, various reformers set up more than forty communities in response to the industrialism and all reforms.
§ Robert Owen founded communal society at New Harmony.
§ Brook Farm committed to philosophy of transcendentalism. Committed to “plain living and high thinking”.
§ Oneida Community practiced “free love”, birth control and selection of parents to produce superior offspring.
§ Mother Ann Lee led the Shakers, which had many religious communities.
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