1. Religion, Culture and
Reform Movements
in Antebellum America

2. Charles Finney “Burned Over” District Evangelism & Social Activism

3. New American Religions and Utopian Societies: Mormons
Product of the Burned Over District
Founder Joseph Smith
Angel and the tablets
Book of Mormon
Targets of persecution
Theocratic cohesion
Polygamy
Smith murdered
Young leads exodus to the “New Zion”
Joseph Smith
Brigham Young

4. The Shakers

5. Utopian Communities

6. Oneida Colony

7. The Millerites Founded by Vermont farmer, William Miller
Miller had joined the Baptists in 1818
Believed every word of the Bible, especially the part about the second coming-millenial
His followers become 7th Day Adventists
they combine the beliefs of Sylvester Graham

8. Intellectual & Cultural Developments Transcendentalism Literature Art

9. Romantic Challenge Revolt against the age of reason
Started in the late 1700s
Change was good
Valued feelings and intuition over pure thought
Interest in nature

10. Henry David Thoreau & Transcendentalism

11. Walden Pond

12. Margaret Fuller “high priestess” of the transcendental movement
published Women in the 19th Century
argued for equality for women

13. Ralph Waldo Emerson Harvard educated Minister--gave it up
Went to Europe to meet the romantic authors
Came back to write and speak

14. Walt Whitman

15. Literary Developments
Uniquely American themes
Washington Irving
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allen Poe
Herman Melville

16. Hudson River School

17. Gilbert
Stuart

18. Reform Movements: Temperance
Crusade targeted alcohol consumption
Led by religious leaders and employers
Seen as an effort to protect home and prevent the squandering of wages by men
Alcohol seen as the cause of poverty

19. Reform Movements: Women’s Rights
Mid-19th Century—inferior status to men
Denied right to vote
Limited educational opportunities
Limited right to own property
Grimke sisters
Began as abolitionist
Gradually adopted a women’s rights platform
Compared to slavery

20. Women’s Rights continued
Struggle for suffrage
Seneca Falls Convention— 1848
Improvements made by:
Democratic spirit of the age of Jackson
Leaders
Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone (Henry Blackwell), Lucretia Mott
Bound with Abolitionism
Increased educational opportunity
Oberlin College

21. Reform Movements: Abolition Movement
American Colonization Society—
Early anti-slavery society
Sought to send freed slaves to Liberia
Abolitionists differed from early anti-slavery groups in their emphasis on racial equality

22. Abolition Organized in Two Camps
Gradualists
Theodore Weld
Gradual erasure by the southern legislatures
Financial compensation
Avoid social and economic problems through gradual emancipation
Militants
Garrison & Douglass
Immediate emancipation without compensation
Garrison published The Liberator
Attacked slavery
Government collusion with the institution