1. 

Essential Question:
 Are the benefits of progress worth
the cost?
Guiding Questions:
 In what ways did America change as
a result of the reform movements in
the 1800’s?
 How did the United States reform its
institutions to match its Democratic
ideals during the Antebellum Era?

2. Social Changes &
Reforms from 1820s to
1850s

4. 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

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
R1-1

6. 
By the early the 1800s, the end of
“established churches” presented the
opportunity to convert citizens


In the early 19th century, church membership was
low & falling
New evangelists in the early 1800s led religious
revivals using mass appeal techniques &
preached that people were capable of selfimprovement

7. 
The renewed religious revivalism became
known as the Second Great Awakening
(1800-1830s):


Highly emotional meetings began in the West &
spread to all sections of the country
Evangelists sought to awaken Americans to the
need for “rebirth” & stressed salvation through
repentance

8. “soul-shaking”
conversion
R1-2
“The ranges of tents,
the fires, the candles
Evangelist Charles G.
and lamps illuminating
Finney was the 1st to
the camp; hundreds
use dramatic revival
moving to and fro; the
meetings to convert
preaching, praying,
people from all
singing, and shouting,…
was enough to swallow
classes
up all the powers of
contemplation.”

9. Stressed new revival techniques:
extended meetings, public prayer
for women, emotionalism

11. The Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints)
▪1823 → Golden
Tablets
▪1830 → Book of
Mormon
▪1844 → Murdered in
Carthage, IL
Joseph Smith (1805-1844)

12. Violence Against Mormons

13. The Mormon “Trek”

14. The Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
▪Deseret
community.
▪Salt Lake City,
Utah
Brigham Young(1801-1877)

15. Mother Ann Lee (1736-1784)
The Shakers
eIf you will take up your crosses against the works of generations, and follow Christ
in the regeneration, God will cleanse you from all
unrighteousness.
eRemember the cries of those who are in need and trouble, that when you are in
trouble, God may hear your cries.
eIf you improve in one talent, God will give you more.
R1-4

16. Shaker Meeting

17. Shaker Simplicity & Utility

18. 
Impact of the 2nd Great Awakening


New reform-minded churches were formed in the
North & helped grow the Baptists & Methodists
in the South
The revivalists taught that each person had a
duty to combat sin; this led to an era of social
reform in the 1830s

20. 

Northern revivals, unlike in the South,
inspired social reform among middle-class
participants
Led to a “benevolent empire" of evangelical
reform movements:



Religious conversion
Morality crusaders attacked prostitution,
gambling, & slavery
Temperance advocates hoped to end alcohol
abuse

22. Temperance was
the era’s most
successful reform

23. 
Evangelicalism brought changes to white,
middle-class families:



Child rearing seen as essential preparation for a
Christian life
Wives became “companions” (not servants) to
their husbands
Cult of Domesticity redefined women’s duty
to promote piety, ethics, & character in children

24. Fears of
Men

25. 
Free public schools grew rapidly from 1820
to 1850 to provide educational & moral
training:


Middle-class Americans saw education as a
means for social advancement, teaching “3 R’s”
& instilling a Protestant ethic
Horace Mann argued that schools “save”
immigrants & poor kids from parents’ “bad”
influence to create good citizens

26. Horace Mann (1796-1859)
“Father of
American Education”
e children were clay in the hands of teachers and
school officials
e children should be “molded” into a state of
perfection
e discouraged corporal punishment
e established state teacher-training programs
R3-6

27. Women Educators
e Troy, NY Female Seminary
e curriculum: math, physics,
history, geography.
e train female teachers
Emma
Willard(17871870)
e 1837 → she established
Mt. Holyoke [So. Hadley, MA]
as the first college for women.
Mary
Lyons(17971849)

28. The McGuffey Eclectic
Readers
e Used religious parables to teach “American values.”
e Teach middle class morality and respect for order.
e Teach “3 Rs” + “Protestant ethic” (frugality, hard work, sobriety)
R3-8

29. McDuffy’s Eclectic Readers were the most
common text used to educated children

30. 
Reformers believed that all problems were
correctable & built state-supported prisons,
asylums, poorhouses:


The most famous asylum reformer was
Dorothea Dix who publicized inhumane
treatment of mental institution patients
As a result, 15 states improved their
penitentiaries & hospitals

31. Dorothea Dix Asylum - 1849

33. 
Radicals grew impatient in the 1830s & split
from earlier moderate reform movements:



Temperance Movement
Peace Movement
Antislaver y Movement

34. 

Moderate anti-slavery supporters backed
emigration to Liberia to avoid a race war
when slaves were gradually emancipated
But radical abolitionists, led by William Lloyd
Garrison, called for immediate slave
emancipation via his American Anti-Slave
Society & The Liberator newsletter

35. 
Garrison became the most
popular abolitionist in the North

36. 
Former slaves, like Frederick Douglass &
Sojourner Truth, became important
abolitionists:



They were able to relate the realities of slavery
through Freedom’s Journal & Nor th Star
Blacks were the leaders in the Underground
Railroad
Blacks formed vigilante groups to protect fugitive
slaves in North

37. Frederick Douglass & Sojourner Truth
1845 --> The Narrative of the Life
Of Frederick Douglass
1847 --> “The North Star”
R212

38. The
Underground
Railroad

39. 

Abolitionists most appealed to small town
folk in the North
Not all Northerners supported abolition;
Opposition came from:


Urban areas & from people who lived near the
Mason-Dixon line
Racism, fears of interracial marriage, & fear of
economic competition from freed blacks

40. 
Radical abolitionists were hurt by in-fighting
& many people criticized Garrison for his
views:



He elected a woman to the executive committee
of his American Anti-Slave Society
Called for Northern succession & boycotts of
political elections
Some abolitionists broke off & formed the
Liber ty Par ty in 1840

41. 

Involvement in abolitionism raised
awareness of women’s inequality
Lucretia Mott & Elizabeth Cady Stanton
organized the 1st feminist national meeting,
the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848


To demand the right to vote
Rejected the cult of domesticity (separate roles
for sexes) in favor of total gender equality

42. Seneca Falls Declaration

44. “Separate Spheres” Concept
“Cult of Domesticity”
eA woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a
refuge from the cruel world outside).
eHer role was to “civilize” her husband and
family.
e An 1830s MA minister:
The power of woman is her dependence. A woman who
gives up that dependence on man to become a reformer
yields the power God has given her for her protection, and
her character becomes unnatural!

45. Early 19c Women
•Unable to vote.
•Legal status of a minor.
•Single → could own her own property.
•Married → no control over her property or
her children.
•Could not initiate divorce.
•Couldn’t make wills, sign a contract, or
bring suit in court without her
husband’s permission.

46. What It Would Be Like If Ladies
Had Their Own Way!
R2-8

47. Cult of Domesticity = Slavery
The 2nd Great Awakening inspired women to
improve society.
Angelina Grimké
Sarah Grimké
e Southern Abolitionists
Lucy Stone
eAmerican Women’s
Suffrage Assoc.
eedited Woman’s Journal

48. 
Some reformers grew tired of trying to
change society & created their own “ideal”
communities:



Robert Owen & Charles Fourier created socialist
communities
Shakers—believed in sexual equality & 2nd
coming of Christ
Oneida Community —Christ’s 2nd coming
already occurred; no need for moral rules (“free
love”)

49. Shaker Hymn
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'Tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
'Till by turning, turning we come round right.

50. Complex Marriage
Male Continence
Communalism
Mutual Criticism
“Ascending” Fellowship

52. Transcendentalism
eLiberation from understanding and the
cultivation of reasoning.”
e“Transcend” the limits of intellect and
allow the emotions, the SOUL, to create an
original relationship with the Universe.

53. Transcendentalist Thinking
▪Man must acknowledge a body of moral truths that
were intuitive and must TRANSCEND more sensational
proof:
•The infinite benevolence of God.
•The infinite benevolence of nature.
•The divinity of man.
▪They instinctively rejected all secular authority and
the authority of organized churches and the Scriptures,
of law, or of conventions

54. Transcendentalism
▪Therefore, if man was divine, it would be wicked that
he should be held in slavery, or his soul corrupted by
superstition, or his mind clouded by ignorance!!
▪Thus, the role of the reformer was to restore man to
that divinity which God had endowed them.

55. Transcendentalist Intellectuals/Writers
Concord, MA
Ralph
Waldo
Emerson
Nature (1832)
Self-Reliance (1841)
Henry
David
Thoreau
Walden(1854)
Resistance to Civil
Disobedience(1849)
“The American
Scholar” (1837)
R3-1/3/4/5

56. The Transcendentalist Agenda
▪Give freedom to the slave.
▪Give well-being to the poor and the
miserable.
▪Give learning to the ignorant.
▪Give health to the sick.
▪Give peace and justice to society.

57. A Transcendentalist Critic: Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
eTheir pursuit of the ideal led to a
distorted view of human
nature and possibilities:
* The Blithedale Romance
eOne should accept the world as an
imperfect place:
* Scarlet Letter
* House of the Seven
Gables

58. 
Americans in the 1830s & 1840s seemed
ready to improve the nation, but in different
ways:




Political parties (Dems & Whigs) hoped to
improve politics
Industrialists hoped to increase the market
revolution
Religious reformers hoped to convert the masses
Reform crusaders hoped to remove all moral &
social evils