1. Age of Jackson Cultural Change and Reformers
The spectacular religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening reversed a trend toward secular rationalism in American culture, and fueled a spirit of social reform

2. ERA OF REFORM
1794: Thomas Paine attacks hierarchical religion
Deism and Unitarianism spreads
COUNTER-REACTION
is the Second Great Awakening ( ’s)
Reform Movements:
1. Evangelicalism
Prison Reform
Care of the mentally ill (Dorothy Dix)
Temperance (Neal Dow, Maine Law )
Women’s Movement
Abolitionism

3. REVIVALISM

4. Charles G. Finney

5. Revivalism and Class Revivals are:
More common on frontier, South and West
Less common among elites
Creates more democratic churches, i.e. Methodists, Baptists, Adventists, etc.
“Canary” for societal attitudes toward slavery:
Churches Split,
Parties Split,
Union Splits.

6. The spirit of optimism and reform affected nearly all areas of American life and culture, including education, the role of women and the family, and literature and the arts.

7. Free Schools Spread of Democracy  Public Education
Education  Stability
CATALYST: Universal white male suffrage
Basic public schools spread
Horace Mann reforms/upgrades schools
Webster’s “lessons” & McGuffey “readers”
State supported colleges spread, esp.UVA
NOTE: schools still rare in West and esp. for free African-Americans, slaves prohibited.
Women struggle for equality in Education

8. Free Schools
NOTE: Schools still rare in West and esp. for free African-Americans, slaves prohibited.
Women also struggle for equality in Education.
NOTABLE EXCEPTIONS:
Emma Willard est. Troy Female Seminary
Oberlin College
Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Seminary

9. Democratic Culture
Artists’ audience was broad citizenry of democracy, not refined elite
Romanticism in America appealed to feelings and intuitions of ordinary Americans

10. Democratic Culture Popular literature sensationalized
Genres included Gothic horror and romantic fiction
Much popular literature written by and for women
Melodrama dominated popular theater
By 1830s, subject of paintings switched from great events and people to scenes from everyday life

11. Literature Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet James Russell Lowell, poet
Song of Hiawatha
The Courtship of Miles Standish
James Russell Lowell, poet
Bigelow Papers, re. Mexican War
Oliver Wendell Holmes, writer
Louisa May Alcott - Little Women
Emily Dickinson, poet
Edgar Allen Poe, author, “The Raven”
William Gilmore Simms, Southern writer
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Herman Melville, Moby Dick

12. Democratic Culture
Architectural style reflected the tenets of ancient Greek democracy
Purpose of art in democratic society was to encourage virtue and proper sentiment
Landscape painters believed representations of untamed nature would elevate popular taste and convey moral truth
Only a few truly avant-garde, romantic artists, like Edgar Allan Poe

13. Lake Nemi, 1856–57. Sanford Robinson Gifford (American, 1823–1880).
“The Hudson River School, first identified at the end of its heyday, was a fraternity of artists who worked principally in New York City from about 1840 to Together, they raised landscape painting to preeminent status in America in the mid-nineteenth century. Originally attracted by the grandeur of natural scenery along the Hudson River and in New England, the painters interpreted both the wilderness and the pastoral face of a growing and changing nation.”
Lake Nemi, 1856–57. Sanford Robinson Gifford (American, 1823–1880).
Falls of the Kaaterskill, 1826.
Thomas Cole,

14. Arts and Sciences Asa Gray, botanist James Audubon, naturalist
Thomas Jefferson, philosophy and architecture
Gilbert Stuart, painter
Charles Wilson Peale, painter (from MD)
John Trumbull, painter
Hudson River School of painting
Stephen C. Foster, American folk music
Washington Irving, writer
James Fenimore Cooper, writer
William Cullen Bryant, poet

15. Transcendentalists (1830’s)
TRUTH IS NOT OBJECTIVE ALONE –DISCOVERED BY “INNER LIGHT”
Individualism, Self-reliance, Self-Discipline
Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist
Henry David Thoreau
Walden
Civil Disobedience
Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass

16. Radical Ideas and Experiments: Utopian Communities
Utopian socialism
Inspired by Robert Owen, Charles Fourier
New Harmony, Indiana—Owenite
Fourierite phalanxes
Religious utopianism
Shakers
Oneida Community

17. Utopian
Communities
Before
the Civil War

18. UTOPIAS New Harmony, Indiana –fails
Brook Farm, MA – transcendentalists – destroyed by fire
Oneida Community, NY – eugenics, lasts 30 years – famous for metalwork
Shakers, Mother Ann Lee, 1770’s – peak in 1840’s, slow decline after

19. The Shakers
What is evidence of Shaker spirituality do you see in the pictures here?

20. Joseph Smith and the Mormons
All American religion, created in US
Mormons move from
Ohio to Missouri & Illinois.
Communitarian sect not popular
Mormon militia arouses fear
Polygamy unpopular
1844 Mormons flee Illinois after mobs murder Smith
Brigham Young leads Mormons west to Utah, , est. frontier cooperative theocracy
Conflict with federal govt. over polygamy, threatens fighting, over polygamy delays statehood to 1896

21. Reform Turns Radical Most reform aimed to improve society
Some radical reformers sought destruction of old society, creation of perfect social order

22. Divisions in the Benevolent Empire
Radical perfectionists impatient by 1830s, split from moderate reform
Temperance movement
Peace movement
Antislavery movement
Moderates sought gradual end to slavery and colonization of freed slaves to its colony of Liberia

23. Women’s Changing Roles
Women experience more freedom, esp. on frontier
Lucretia Mott, Quaker, Abolitionist
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, organizer
Susan B. Anthony, lecturer
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, first MD
Margaret Fuller, editor
1848 “Declaration of Sentiments,” Seneca Falls, NY, “all men and women are created equal,”
LAUNCHES WOMEN”S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

24. Domesticity and Changes in the American Family
New conception of family’s role in society
Child-rearing seen as essential preparation for self-disciplined Christian life
Women confined to domestic sphere
Women assumed crucial role within home

25. The Cult of Domesticity
“The Cult of True Womanhood”
Placed women in the home
Glorified home as center of all efforts to civilize and “Christianize” society
Middle- and upper-class women became increasingly dedicated to the home as mothers
Women of leisure entered reform movements

26. Marriage for Love Mutual love must characterize marriage
Wives became more of a companion to their husbands and less of a servant
Legally, the husband was the unchallenged head of the household

27. The Discovery of Childhood
Nineteenth-century child the center of family
Each child seen as unique, irreplaceable
Ideal to form child’s character with affection
Parental discipline to instill guilt, not fear
Train child to learn self-discipline
Family size declines from average of 7.04 children to 5.42 by 1850

28. Abolitionism
Roots in Second Great Awakening – see impact of Charles Grandison Finney
BEFORE 1820 antislavery societies are more numerous in the South. Slave revolts end Southern toleration of abolition.
1835 Congress forbids use of mail to send abolitionist material through the mail.
1836 House of Reps passes the “gag rule,”
John Quincy Adams defeats this in court after 8 yrs.
South advances theory that slavery “civilizes” Africans, compares slave’s quality of life to “wage slaves” in the North

29. From Abolitionism to Women’s Rights
Abolitionism opened to women’s participation
Involvement raised awareness of women’s inequality

30. From Abolitionism to Women’s Rights
Seneca Falls Convention in 1848
Organized by Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Prompted by experience of inequality in abolition movement
Began movement for women’s rights

31. Shift from Gradualism to Abolitionism
Urgency of the Reform Movement following 2nd Great Awakening
Increasing number of manumissions
Failure of “Re-Colonization” efforts
Tensions Increase following Turner’s 1831 Rebellion
Free Blacks loose rights/sometimes freedom
Impact of Garrison  Propaganda War
Gag Rule

32.
This handbill urging opponents of abolitionists to obstruct an anti-slavery meeting demonstrates the depth of pro-slavery feeling. Although the handbill advocates peaceful means, violence sometimes erupted between the two factions. An emotion-laden handbill was a factor in the well-known Boston riot of October 21, In that incident, a mob broke into the hall where the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society was meeting, and threatened William Lloyd Garrison's life. "Outrage," February 2, 1837 Handbill

33. Divisions in the Benevolent Empire
Radicals like William Lloyd Garrison demanded immediate emancipation
1831: Garrison founded The Liberator
1833: American Anti-Slavery Society

34. The Abolitionist Enterprise: Public Reception
Appealed to hard-working small town folk
Opposition in cities and near Mason-Dixon line
Opposition from the working class
Disliked blacks
Feared black economic and social competition
Solid citizens saw abolitionists as anarchists

35. The Abolitionist Enterprise: Theodore Dwight Weld
Weld an itinerant minister converted by Finney
Adapted his revivalist techniques to abolition
Successful mass meetings in Ohio, New York

36. Black Abolitionists
Former slaves related the horrible realities of bondage
Prominent figures included Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth
Black newspapers, books, and pamphlets publicized abolitionism to a wider audience
Blacks were also active in the Underground Railroad

37. David Walker Free black from North Carolina
Urged slaves to rise up and revolt for their freedom.
Found dead outside of his printing office
“Southern slave masters hated Walker and put a price on his head. In 1829, 50 unsolicited copies of Walker's Appeal were delivered to a black minister in Savannah, Ga. The frightened minister, understandably concerned for his welfare, informed the police. The police, in turn, informed the governor of Georgia. As a result, the state legislature met in secret session and passed a bill making the circulation of materials that might incite slaves to riot a capital offense. The legislature also offered a reward for Walker's capture, $10,000 alive and $1,000 dead.”
David Walker

38. Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
“I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free state….It was a moment of the highest excitement I ever experienced…. This state of mind, however, very soon subsided; and I was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness. I was yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of slavery. This in itself was enough to damp the ardor of my enthusiasm.”
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 1845

39. The Abolitionist Enterprise: Obstacles
Abolitionists hampered by infighting
William Lloyd Garrison disrupted movement by associating with radical reform efforts
Urged abolitionists to abstain from participating in the political process
Also involved in women’s rights movement
Some abolitionists helped form the Liberty Party in 1840

40. William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)
“ I am earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – and I will be heard.” (The Liberator, 1831)

41. COMPARE AND CONTRAST
GARRISON F. DOUGLASS DAVID WALKER