1. Antebellum Reform Movements

2. Key Terms to Know and Memorize
Romanticism
Hudson River School
James Fennimore Cooper
Walt Whitman
Herman Melville
Edgar Allan Poe
Transcendentalists
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience
Utopian Societies
Brook Farm
New Harmony
Oneida Community
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Margaret Fuller
2nd Great Awakening
Protestant Revivalism
Shakers
Mormons
Charles Grandison Finney
Temperance Crusade
Phrenology
Horace Mann
Asylum Movement
Dorothia Dix
Feminism/Women’s Rights
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Lucretia Mott
Susan B. Anthony
Seneca Falls Convention
“Declaration of Sentiments”
Abolitionism
Quakers
American Colonization Society
Liberia
William Lloyd Garrison
Liberator
American Antislavery Society
Frederick Douglass
North Star
Antiabolitionist violence
Amistad
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe

3. Reform=Change for Improvement
Main impulses
Faith in human nature
Goodness of the individual
Desire for order and control
Desire to remake society
Religious/moral impulses
Romanticism
Transcendentalists
Utopian Societies
Second Great Awakening
Temperance Crusade
Feminism
Abolitionism

4. Second Great Awakening
Similar to First Great Awakening:
Recall- Evangelists (Preachers) “Sinners in the hands of and Angry God”
Jonathan Edwards 1741
Popular
Revival MeetingsCamps
WASPs
New Religious Sects Baptists and Methodists
Revivals increase popularity of reform movements

5. The Rise of Popular Religion
In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America, I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country… Religion was the foremost of the political institutions of the United States.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville, 1832

6. Revivalism and the Social Order
Society during the Jacksonian era was undergoing deep and rapid change
The revolution in markets brought both economic expansion and periodic depressions.
To combat this uncertainty reformers sought stability and order in religion
Religion provided a means of social control in a disordered society
Church-goers embraced the values of hard work, punctuality, and sobriety
Revivals brought unity and strength and a sense of peace

7. Charles Finney
Charles Finney conducted his own revivals in the mid 1820s and early 1830s
He rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination
adopted ideas of free will and salvation to all
Really popularized the new form of revival

8. Charles Finney and the Conversion Experience
New form of revival
Meeting night after night to build excitement
Speaking bluntly
Praying for sinners by name
Encouraging women to testify in public
Placing those struggling with conversion on the “anxious bench” at the front of the church
Such techniques all heightened the emotions of the conversion process (born again)

11. Mormons Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS)
Joseph Smith (prophet for Mormons)
1830s Book of Mormon
Translation of set of Golden Tablets
Ancient Civilization in America (one of lost tribes of Israel)
Dark Skin = Sin
Story of “American Hebrews”

12. Joseph Smith Brigham Young

13. His unorthodox teachings led to persecution and mob violence.
Mormons
Mormon culture upheld the middle-class values of hard work, self-control, thrift and material success
He tried to create a City of Zion: Kirkland, Ohio - Independence, Missouri - then to Nauvoo, Illinois.
His unorthodox teachings led to persecution and mob violence.
Smith was murdered in 1844 by an anti-Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois.
Church in conflict

14. Mormons Continued Smith creates the movement and obtains converts
Rigid way of life:
Polygamy
Secrecy
Life Style (very prescriptive, foods, behavior)
New York, Illinois,
Smith Arrested and killed by mob
Brigham Young takes the converts WEST to Utah

15. The Second Great Awakening
“Spiritual Reform From Within” [Religious Revivalism]
Social Reforms & Redefining the Ideal of Equality
Temperance
Education
Abolitionism
Asylum & Penal Reform
Women’s Rights

16. Second Great Awakening Widespread Christian Movement
Revivals = “giving new life,” to bring back to life specifically Popular Religion (1830s)
Second Great Awakening
Widespread Christian Movement
Revival meetings= new life
Emotional Sermons
Increased the amount of people participating in churches (particularly women)
Abolition and Temperance movement are directly linked to 2nd Great Awakening
Spread Christian ideas of equality and morality.

17. Romanticism Nostalgic- looking fondly back on earlier times
N.I.N.E.S
Romanticism
Artistic movement
Emerges
Message “That would express their nation’s special virtues.”
Discovering American Art as an American creation.
Nostalgic- looking fondly back on earlier times
Inspired by expression of inner spirit
Nature and God together
Work to unleash capacity for good and joy
How do the following represent concepts of American Romanticism?
Hudson River School
James Fennimore Cooper
Washington Irving
Walt Whitman
Herman Melville
Edgar Allan Poe

18. Motifs in Romanticism
The Nostalgic (sympathetic fondness) interpretation of the historic PAST
Individual REBELLION
Subjects from MYTH and FOLKLORE
Glorification of NATURE, faraway settings
Emotion-SENTIMENTALISM = Nobility of the uncivilized man and simple life
Spiritual (GOTHIC themes – supernatural, mysterious)

19. Romanticism in Painting
Church
Hudson River School (NY)
First Natural Landscapes
Power of Nature
Sublime (feeling of awe, feeling of wonderment)
Grandeur of Nature
Nature offers promise
Sense of Nostalgia in nature

20. Fredric Church Thomas Cole Thomas Doughty Asher Durand

21. Romanticism in Literature link
Washington Irving (1809)
Legend of Sleepy Hollow
American theme, Dutch in New York, early America
James Fenimore Cooper (1820s)
Wrote about American wilderness
Leather Stocking Tales
“Last of the Mohicans”
Reflected American Ideals:
Independent Individual
Natural Inner Goodness
Need for order

22. Romanticism in Literature 2
Walt Whitman (Link)
“Poet of American Democracy”
NYC
Themes
Celebrated Democracy
Spirit of the Individual
Liberation of individual
Pleasures of the Flesh
American Spirit
Emotional and Physical Release
Personal fulfillment
Homosexual
Leaves of Grass
Greatest collection
“When Lilacs Last in the dooryard bloom’d”
Lincoln tribute
Captain My Captain about Lincoln’s Assassination

23. Stop this day and night with me, and you shall          possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun —          there are millions of suns left, You shall no longer take things at second or third          hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead,          nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor          take things from me, You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from          yourself.

24. Romanticism in Literature 3
Herman Melville (link)
NY, 1819
Best of his era
Moby Dick pub 1851
Human spirit was troubled
Self Destructive
Man against nature

25. Romanticism in Literature 4
Poe exposes… “the underside of the American dream of the self-made man and showed the price of materialism and excessive competition -- loneliness, alienation, and images of death-in-life.”
Edgar Allen Poe (link)
Died 1849
Poems and stories
Sad and Macabre
1845 the Raven
Theme of individuals rising above to see deeper world of spirit and emotion

26. Transcendentalists (Link)
Emerges out of Romanticism
New England
Reaction against traditional Logic and Enlightenment- non-conformist values
Independent thinking
Referred to reason as the ability to grasp beauty and truth through---
 Instinct and Emotion
(the highest human faculties)

27. More Transcendentalism
TRANSCENDENTALISM = a philosophy that asserts the primacy of the SPIRITUAL over the MATERIAL and EMPIRICAL
According to Kant, there are some ideas and aspects of knowledge which are beyond what the senses can perceive,
but are INTUITIONS of the mind itself – he named them TRANSCENDENTAL FORMS
The TRANSCENDENT is the fundamental reality
The ultimate truth transcends the physical world

28. Transcendentalists and Nature
Nature was the source of deep Human inspiration
Helps individuals see truth within their souls
Genuine Spirituality come through communion with nature

29. Super individualism was at their core.
Philosophically though, there was a center and it was about the notion of spontaneous reason.
people are capable of discovering a truth solely on the basis of intuition.
Walter Harding, in The Days of Henry Thoreau, says Kant and Hegel argued that there is a body of knowledge within man, innate, and that this knowledge transcended the senses, thus Transcendentalism.
This knowledge was the voice of God within Man. It was central to the Transcendentalists' belief that the child was born with an ability to tell right from wrong. His moral sense became calloused as he grew and listened to the world rather than that inner voice. Particularly Alcott called for a return to a childish innocence and for one to heed the voice of God within.

30. Ralph Waldo Emerson (link)
Leader, Unitarian Minister, devoted to Transcendentalism
Wrote Essays, Lectures, Very Popular
Advocated the commitment of the individual to full exploration of the inner capacities.

31. Emerson: the Nationalist
Wanted cultural Independence
1837 “The American Scholar”
American dependence on culture & art is over
Truth & beauty can be derived from instinct & creative genius
“Let the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts there abide. And a huge world will come round to him.”

32. R.W. Emerson Essay “Nature” 1836
In the quest for Self-Fulfillment
Individuals should work for Communion with Nature
“In the woods, we return to reason and faith… Standing on the bare ground my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean egotism vanishes… I am part and particle of God.”

33. RW Emerson: essay 1841 “Self Reliance”
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind”
Self Reliance:
was a quest for unity of the Universe
The wholeness of god
The great spiritual force/essence of spiritual soul
Each person has innate capacity to find divinity personally

34. Henry David Thoreau Transcendentalist Repudiated repressive forces
Individuals should:
Work for self-realization
Resist conformity
Should respond to own instincts
Walden- in the Concord (Mass) Woods
Most famous book
Lived alone for 2 years

35. Thoreau
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what It had to teach.
And not when I came to die I discover that I had not lived”

36. Thoreau Went to jail briefly Refused to pay a Poll Tax
Protested Slavery
1849: Essay “Resistance to Civil Government”
An individual’s personal morality has first claim on his actions
Government that violated personal morality had no legitimate authority
An individual response should be
Civil Disobedience or Passive Resistence

37. Utopian Societies, Brook Farm, New Harmony, Oneida Community, Morman
Utopian movements are radical manifestations of the reform impulse.
They have the common vision to remake society in a “more perfect way”
Communal characteristics
Separate from mainstream society
Cooperative

38. Utopian Movements Brook Farm Massachusetts 1841-47 Transcendentalists
Individual strives for Self- Realization
Communal
Leisure is key
New Harmony
Robert Owen
“A village of cooperation”
Oneida Community 1848 NY
Rejected traditional family and marriage values

39. Oneida Community Oneida Community 1848 NY John Humphrey Noyes
Rejected traditional family and marriage values
All residents were married to all other residents
No permanent conjugal ties
Sexual behavior was monitored to prevent abuse.
Children raised communally
Liberation from the demands of male lust.

40. Shakers Voluntary No children born into Shakerism
Contact between men and women was limited
Social discipline was important
Religious extremists
Re-defined traditional sexuality
Founded 1770s
Northeast + Northwest 1840s
“Shaking” ecstatic movement- would “shake themselves free from sin” while performing a loud chant.
Commitment to Celibacy!?
A view of Shaker Meeting from A photographer from the Poland Spring Hotel took this image. The Shakers are seated in the front benches. The spectators and guests from the Poland Spring Hotel are in the back rows.

42. Temperance= Movement Against Alcohol (link)
Religious based Social Reform Movement
Crusade
“The church must take… on subject of Temperance, the moral reform, all the subjects of practical morality.”
Crime, disorder, poverty caused by alcoholism
Drinking was especially a problem for Women- husband abuse them, and kids, and drink the money.

44. Temperance (Really good link)
1826 American Society for the Promotion of Temperance
Preached abstinence
Large meetings
“Going on the Wagon”
Will later evolve into national movement
Women’s Christian Temperance Union 1878
Anti-Saloon League 1880s
Eventually, under Progressives, will lead to prohibition of Alcohol 18th Amendment to the Constitution last

45. Education Public Education not widely established
Some progress in Massachusetts
New interest in Pub Ed
To create a stable social values=conformity
Horace Mann is the leader
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

46. Education
Mann
“An educated electorate is essential to the working of a free Political system.”
Education “only way to counter…the tendency to domination of capital and servility of labor.”
Advocated protestant values- thrift, order, discipline, punctuality, respect for authority
Not wide spread change comes from this movement.

47. Asylum (link) and Prison Reforms
Rehabilitation is the key
Asylum=mental health
Prison= criminals
Rise of the Penitentiary
“A place to cultivate penitence”
Through discipline
Problem- Mentally ill and criminals kept in terrible conditions
Reform is key
Dorothea Dix
Some progress

48. Feminism Women were active in reform and Revival- 2nd Great Awakening
Temperance
Abolition
Women’s rights
Many women begin to call for women’s rights
“Men and women were created equal. They are both moral and accountable beings and whatever is right for man to do is right for women to do.”

49. Women’s Rights Movement
Lucretia Mott
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Strong connection between Women’s Rights and Abolition movement

50. Seneca Falls Convention 1848 (link)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Lucretia Mott
Fredrick Douglass
Declaration of Sentiments
Emulated Declaration of Independence