Ch 15: The Ferment of Reform and Culture (1790-1860)Religious Revivalism swept thru the country, transforming the place of religion in American life & sending believers out on their missions to perfect the world. During this time, art & literature experienced a great transformation.
A) Reforms in Religion
1. The Second Great Awakening: Reviving Religion
-Unitarianism: offshoot of deism; believed that God existed in only 1 form (aot 3)
-The 2nd Gt Aw was the boiling reaction to this growing liberalism in religion 1800
-South & West: Methodists, Baptists came from less “learned” communities in rural S & W
-Churches split over the issue of slavery, foreshadowing the Civil War
4. A Desert Zion in Utah
B) Reforms in Education
1. Free Schools for a Free People
C) Reforms in Temperance, etc
1. Background
3. Dorothy Dix convinced Ams that the demented weren’t devilppl, but mentally il.
4. American Peace Society led by William Ladd
5. Demon Rum—The “Old Deluder”
D) Feminist Movement
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: advocated for women’s suffrage
Susan B Anthony: militant lecturer for women’s rights
5. Feminists met at Seneca Falls, NY in Woman’s Rights Convention (1848) where Stanton read Declaration of Sentiments, which declared that all men & women are created equal.
6. While later eclipsed by campaign agst slavery, more equality was given to women.
E) Wilderness Utopias
F) Development of a Unique American Culture
1. Ams too busy conquering continentàno time to develop cultureàborrowed from Europe
2. The Dawn of Scientific Achievement
1. The Second Great Awakening: Reviving Religion
- Austere Calvinist rigor was being softened by rationalist ideasàppl are naturally good (aot evil)
-Unitarianism: offshoot of deism; believed that God existed in only 1 form (aot 3)
-The 2nd Gt Aw was the boiling reaction to this growing liberalism in religion 1800
- It was spread to the masses on huge “camp meetings” where traveling preachers orated
- Peter Cartwright: revivalist traveling preacher who converted 1000s. Charles Grandison Finney: one of the greatest revival preachers
- Middle class women were the 1st & most fervent enthusiasts of rel revivalism
- Evangelicals preached of female spiritual worth=they can bring husbands/families back to God
- Women formed benevolent, charitable organizations & spearheaded crusades of most reforms
- Baptists & Methodists stressed personal conversion, dem in church affairs, and emotionalism.
- The 2nd Gt Aw widened lines b/w classes & regions
-South & West: Methodists, Baptists came from less “learned” communities in rural S & W
-Churches split over the issue of slavery, foreshadowing the Civil War
4. A Desert Zion in Utah
- Joseph Smith formed Mormon church, but murderedàBrigham Young led Mormons to Utah
- The Mormon community, able to overcome pioneer hardships, became prosperous
- Hwvr, Mormons ran afoul of antipolygamy laws passed by Congàdelayed statehood for Utah
B) Reforms in Education
1. Free Schools for a Free People
- Tax-supported public edu came 1820s when Ams saw they had to educate their children (future)
- Hwvr, teachers (mostly men) did not know how to teach & not many schools due to high cost
- Horace Mann campaigned effectively for better school system in MA & influence spread
- 1st state-supported universities appeared in South.
- Women’s schools came in 1820s thanks to Emma Willard
- Oberlin College in Ohio admitted women & black students
C) Reforms in Temperance, etc
1. Background
- Optimistic promises of 2nd Gt Aw inspired may to do battle agst earthly evils
- Idealists dreamt of perfect society: free from cruelty, war, alcohol, discrimination, slavery
- Women were particularly prominent in these reform crusades, esp in their own struggle for vote
3. Dorothy Dix convinced Ams that the demented weren’t devilppl, but mentally il.
4. American Peace Society led by William Ladd
5. Demon Rum—The “Old Deluder”
- Custom + hard, monotonous lifeàexcessive drinking among women, clergymen, Cong, etc
- American Temperance Society in 1826 persuaded ppl to stop drinking (family problems)
- Neal S. Dow thought that alcohol should be removed by legislation
- Maine Law of 1851: prohibited manufacture & sale of alcohol
- Tho impossible to extirpate thirst for alcohol, there was much less drinking than before.
D) Feminist Movement
- Tho much better off than Eur women, women were still “the submerged sex”
- Gender differences in 19th century Am: Women=keepers of society’s conscienceàteach children how to be good, productive citizens & guide men away from savage way of life
- Women increasingly felt that the glorified sanctuary of the home was in fact a gilded cage.
- Clamorous female reformers began to gather strength mid-century:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: advocated for women’s suffrage
Susan B Anthony: militant lecturer for women’s rights
5. Feminists met at Seneca Falls, NY in Woman’s Rights Convention (1848) where Stanton read Declaration of Sentiments, which declared that all men & women are created equal.
6. While later eclipsed by campaign agst slavery, more equality was given to women.
E) Wilderness Utopias
- Bolstered by the utopian spirit of the age, various reformers set up 40+ communities of cooperative, communistic, or “communitarian” nature.
- Robert Owen founded a communal society in order to seek human betterment, but attracted only radicals, work-shy theorists, and outright scoundrelsàcolony sank in contradiction & confusion.
- Oneida Community, founded in 1848, practiced complex marriage, birth control, and eugenic selection of parents to produce superior offspring.
- Various communistic experiments have been attempted, but in competition w. democratic free enterprise and free land, virtually all of them sooner or later failed or changed their methods.
F) Development of a Unique American Culture
1. Ams too busy conquering continentàno time to develop cultureàborrowed from Europe
2. The Dawn of Scientific Achievement
- Before, pure science not valued, Americans only meddled with practical gadgets
- Medicine primitive, but by 1840s, doctors successfully used laughing gas/ether as anesthetics
- Despite Puritan prejudice agst art, competent painters emerged
- Between 1820 and 1850, a Greek revival in architecture came to America.
- Music was also shaking off the restraints of colonial days
- Genuinely Am literature received strong boost from age of nat’lism & middle class on east coast
- Washington Irving & James Fenimore Cooper: 1st Am writer & novelist to gain world fame
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (not transc.) wrote for refined class, but read by less-cultured
- Tho not brilliant, poet John Greenleaf Whittier was more important in influencing social action
- Rejected theory that all knowledge comes to mind thru senses. Truth transcends senses & can’t be found just by observation
- Ralph W Emerson: trans poet-philosopher; urged writers to forget Eur & write abt Am interests
- Henry D Thoreau: must reduce bodily wants--> time for pursuit of truth thru study/meditation.
- Not all writers believed so keenly in human goodness & social progress
- Edgar Allan Poe wrote pessimistically, not like literature of time period
- Nathaniel Hawthorne & Herman Melville reflected continuing Calvinist obsession with original sin & never-ending struggle b/w good & evil
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