Chapter 15: The Ferment of Reform and Culture (1790 - 1860)

 

The Second Great Awakening

 

Introduction/Background

 

 

Causes of 2nd Great Awakening:

 

Deism

• relied science rather than the bible

• believed in a Supreme Being who had created a knowable universe and provided human beings with a capacity for moral behavior

Unitarianism

• Believed that God existed in only one person and not in the Trinity  (God the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit)
•  Stressed goodness of human nature
• Proclaimed their belief in free will and the possibility of salvation through good works

 

Effects of 2nd Great Awakening:

•  Many converts
• encouraged the woman movement
•  Shattered churches
•  Created new sects
•  Evangelicalism
• Swept up even more people than the First Great Awakening
• The Methodists and Baptists benefited greatly from the 2nd Great Awakening .
• It widened the lines between classes and regions.
• Now there was a lot of religious diversity.

 

Camp Meetings: 

• huge gatherings in which people would listen to the gospel by intense preachers
• revivals boosted church membership and stimulated a variety of humanitarian reforms

 

 

Charles Finney:

• greatest of revival preachers
• denounced alcohol and slavery
• served as President of Oberlin College in Ohio, which he played a big role in abolitionism

 

5. Feminization of Religion (a key feature to the 2nd Great Awakening)

• made up the majority of new church members
• hosted most of era's reforms

 

 

6. Fragmentation of Faiths/ Denominational Diversity

 

A. Along class lines

 

B. Slavery

 

7. Mormonism

•  Joseph Smith- founder of the Mormon religion, recieved golden plates (Book of Mormon), and was murdered by a mob
•  Brigham Young- leader of Mormons when Smith was killed, led Mormons to Salt Lake City

 

8. Establishment of Liberal Arts Colleges

 

 

 

Rise of Public Education: Free Schools for Free People

 

•  There were not many public schools that were tax supported
• The higher class people gradually realized that if they didn't pay to educate the under class, the higher class would lose its votes from the dangerous under class.
• Teachers were low paid, school hours were short, small curriculum.
• Small one-room school houses.
• Mainly concentrated on the 3 R's: Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmatic

 

Horace Mann

• He was secretary on the Board of Education
• Fought for: better school houses, higher pay for teachers, and a bigger curriculum

 

 

Other Major Reform Movements & Reformers

 

Dorothea Dix-

• reformer
• worked to improve the treatment of the mentally ill
• appointed superintendent of women nurses for the Union forces during the Civil War
• traveled to different asylums and reported the horrors of the treatment of the insane

 

 

Temperance Movement

 

 

 

Women's Movement

 

Lucretia Mott- A sprightly Quaker whose ire had been aroused when she and her fellow female delegates to the London antislavery convention of 1840 were not recognized.

 

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton- One of the most persistent battlers for women's rights.

 

 

Susan B. Anthony- Fought for women's equal rights in courts, workplace and at the polls.

 

 

Elizabeth Blackwell - First female to graduate medical college.

 

 

 

Margaret Fuller- Edited a transcendentalist journal during the struggle to bring unity and republican gov't to Italy.

 

 

 

Grimke Sisters- Fought to abolish slavery.

 

 

 

Women's Rights Convention of 1848

•  Unflinching feminists met at Seneca Falls, New York.
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton read a "Declaration of Sentiments," which in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence declared that "all men and women are created equal."
• One resolution formally demanded the ballot for females.
• The Senca Falls meeting launched the modern women's rights movement.

 

The Utopian Movement

 

 

Owenites

 

 

 

Brook Farm

• Located in Massachusetts
• Comprised of 200 acres
• Started in 1841 with about 20 people committed to transendentalism.
• Inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to write the classic novel, The Blithedale Romance  (1852)

 

 

 

Oneida Community - 

• Founded by John Humphrey Noyes. He believed in the possibility of a perfect Christian community on earth.
• Thought that true Christians should posses no private property-nor indulge in exclusive emotional relationships, like marriage.
• All members of this society should be free to love one another in "complex marriage."

 

 

Shakers

 

Scientific Achievements John J. Audubon Birds of America

 

 

 

Artistic Achievements

 

 

 

Literature

 

 

Washington Irving- America's first famous author

 

James Fenimore Cooper

 

 

 

Transcendentalism

 

 

Background:

• Rejected the theory derived from John Locke that all knowledge comes to the mind through the senses.
• Feel that it rather "transcends", cannot be found by observation alone.
   

 

Beliefs of:

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

• Best known transcendentalist

 

Henry David Thoreau(1817-1862)

• Walden: Or Life in the Woods (1854)
• Waldon Pond near Concord, Massachusetts.
• His work influenced Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Walt Whitman

 

Longfellow

 

Whittier

 

Lowell/Holmes (these two, along with Longfellow, are in a great historical fiction book called The Dante Club - you should read it sometime!)

 

Louisia May Alcott- author of Little Women

 

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) - ‘The Belle of Amherst’, American poet, wrote hundreds of poems including “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”, “Heart, we will forget him!”, “I'm Nobody! Who are You?”, and “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!”; 

 

 

Edgar Allan Poe-American poet, critic, short story writer, and author of such macabre works as “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1840);

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne- wrote the Scarlet Letter about the time of the Puritans. He had a sad life which caused for his tragic writing.

 

Herman Melville- author of Moby Dick a sad story of good verses evil. Melville was a seaman and his tails of the South seas were popular; Moby Dick was initially unpopular.