Transcript Document
Early to Mid- Eighteenth Century
The Antebellum Period
Jacksonian Era bred reform
o Free public schools
o Treatment of mentally ill
o Abolishing sale of alcohol
Sources
o Puritan sense of mission
o Enlightenment belief in human goodness
o Politics of Jacksonian democracy
o Changing relationship b/t men/women, social classes, ethnic
groups
o Religious beliefs
Review of First GA
o Reaction to rationalism, human reason from Enlightenment
o Spread of liberal ideas that reject original sin, Calvinism/Puritanism,
predestination
Second GA
o Start w/ educated people late 18th – early 19th century
• Timothy Dwight, president of Yale
o Campus revivals spread message to young men evangelical
preachers
o audience-centered revivals, easy to understand if uneducated,
salvation for ALL
o = populist movement
o Attuned to democratization of American society
1823- Charles G. Finney (Presbyterian) launch revivals in
upstate NY
Like First GA, reject rational argument, appeal to emotion &
fear of damnation
Must PUBLICLY declare revived faith
ALL can be saved! How?
o Faith, hard work
o Appeal to middle class
western NY = “burned-over district”
o “fire-and-brimstone” revivals
o activist religious groups
• Leadership, well-organized voluntary societies for reform movements
Primarily in South, western frontier
Travel around, gather crowds in thousands
Dramatic preaching, camp meetings
Appeal to those who had never belonged to a church
Largest Protestant denominations by 1850
Joseph Smith, 1830
o Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Religious thinking based on Book of Mormon
o Traced NAs to lost tribes of Israel
Move group from NY to Ohio to MO to IL
o Smith murdered in IL by mob
o Persecution of Mormons western frontier
o Brigham Young
New Zion established as religious community on Great Salt
Lake (UT)
o Cooperative social organization success in wilderness
o Polygamy hostility by government
Ideas, the Arts, and Literature
Early 19th century = move away from balance, order, reason
intuition, feelings, individual acts of heroism, study of
nature
= Romanticism
In US, expressed by transcendentalists in NE
Small group of NE thinkers
o Emerson, Thoreau
See mystical, intuitive world
Focus on thinking as means for discovering inner self
o Question doctrines of established churches, business practices of
merchants
Look for essence of God in nature
Challenge materialism of society
o Artistic expression OVER pursuit of wealth
o Organized institutions unimportant
Value individualism, but support reform
o Ex: antislavery, temperence
1803 – 1882
o Concord, MA
o Critic of slavery, supporter of Union
Popular American speaker, writer
Spirit of Americans = individualistic, nationalistic
o Does not belief must imitate Europe
o Create DISTINCT American culture
Argue for self-reliance, independent thinking, primacy of
spiritual matters
o Material matters unimportant
1817-1862
o Concord, MA
o Friend of Emerson
Observations of nature discovery of essential truths of
life, universe
o 2-year experiment living simply in cabin in woods
o Writings = Walden (1854)
• HDT remembered as ecologist, conservationist
“On Civil Disobedience”
o Advocates nonviolent protest
o Can disobey unjust laws, must accept penalty
• Refused to pay tax ($ to Mexican War effort) one night in jail
1841- George Ripley, communal experiment in
Transcendentalist living
o Protestant minister, founded in MA
o Goal to achieve “more natural union between intellectual and
manual labor.”
Who lived there?
o Emerson, Margaret Fuller (women’s rights), Theodore Parker
(theologian), Nathaniel Hawthorne
Artistic creativity, innovative school, appealed to NE
intellectual elite
1849- fire, debt end of experiment
Attempt to withdraw from conventional society, create ideal
community (utopia)
o Open lands many communities
o Mormons (religious), Brook Farm (secular)
o Diversity of “backwoods utopias” = diversity of reform ideas
Shakers:
o Religious movement w/ 6k members
o Property held in common, women/men separate (no marriage, no
sex), simple living
o Lack of new “recruits” end by mid-1900s
• Vs. Amana Colonies- similar, but ALLOW marriage
Oneida Community
o John Humphrey Noyes (1848) convert to Xnty
o Start community in NY- dedicated to ideal of perfect social,
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economic equality
Share property, marriage partners
Attacked for “planned reproduction,” communal child-rearing
Seen as experiment of “free love”
Limited success- sold silverware
Expressions of democratic, reforming impulses of Age of Jackson
Genre painting = portrayal of everyday life of ordinary
people
o 1830s- in vogue
o People riding riverboats, voting
George Caleb Bingham
o Common people doing domestic chores
William S Mount
o Lively rural scenes
Thomas Cole
Frederick Church
o American landscapes (scenes along Hudson, western frontier)
Hudson River school = name for expression of romantic age
fascination w/ natural world
Inspiration = democracy of Athens
Greek styles glorify democratic spirit of the republic
o Resent Georgian architecture- too tied to England!
Columns, columns, columns!
o Public buildings, banks, hotels, private homes
Style easily imitated “national style”
o Universal frontage for buildings
Distinctly American
o Transcendentalist writers (HDT, RWE)
o Others
Post-War of 1812 nationalism
o Eager to read works of American writers about American themes
Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Herman Melville
o Fiction writers, American settings for novels
o Leatherstocking Tales (1824-1841)
• Glorification of the frontiersman ( = nature’s nobleman)
o The Scarlet Letter (1850)
• Question intolerance, conformity of American life
o Moby Dick (1855)
• Theological, cultural conflicts of era (Ahab v. white wale)
Hope to improve moral behavior (sermons, pamphlets) political actions,
replacement of old institutions with new
High alcohol consumption social ills
o 1820- 5 gallons hard liquor/person
Temperance movement = abstinence from alcohol
o Most popular reform movement
1826- American Temperance Society founded by ministers
o Persuade drinkers to abstain from alcohol
o 1 million+ members by 1840s
o 1840- Washingtonians = recovering alcoholics
• Argue alcoholism a DISEASE
• Need practical, helpful treatment
Opposition? German, Irish immigrants
o Little political power to prevent state, city reforms vs. alcohol
o Many pass taxes on liquor sales
Support shared by…
o Factory owners, politicians
o Temperance = drop in crime, poverty, absence from work, increased
output on job
1851- ME = first state to PROHIBIT manufacture, sale of
liquor
By 1850s- slavery overshadows until 1870s (WCTU), 1919
(18th Amend.)
1820s-30s- concern of high number of criminals, emotionally
disturbed
Lived in bad conditions, abused, neglected, poor
effort to set up public institutions (state-supported prisons,
mental hospitals, poor houses)
o Attempt to improve when removed from squalor, learn disciplined life,
work skills
Dorothea Dix
o Teacher from MA
o Criminals & mentally ill shouldn’t be confined to same unsanitary space
o Cross-country crusade to make public the conditions, treatment of
mentally ill
o 1840s- new mental hospitals built, improvements on existing hospitals,
professional treatment for patients
Schools for Deaf & Blind
o Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Thomas Gallaudet
Prisons
o Penitentiaries instead of jails
o Solitary confinement reflection on sins, repentance
o Structure, discipline moral reform
• Rigid rules, discipline, moral instruction
Middle-class reformers motivated by fears for future
o A republic with growing numbers of uneducated poor
o Immigrants and native-born
establishment of free public schools
o Workers’ groups also advocate in cities
Free Common Schools (via tax $)
o Horace Mann, MA Board of Education
o Compulsory attendance, longer school year, better teacher prep
Moral Education
o Must also teach moral principles
• Protestant tone of public school Catholic schools
o William Holmes McGuffey- McGuffey readers
• Show virtues of hard work, punctuality, sobriety
• Needed in emerging industrial society
Who?
o moderates for gradual emancipation to radicals for immediate
abolition
Second GA Xn view that slavery = sin
o New MORAL view of slavery
o Compromise w/ defenders of slavery difficult
ACS founded 1817
o Robert Finley
Idea to transport freed slaves to African colony
Appeal to moderates, politicians
o Many whites still have racist attitudes
o Would remove free blacks from society
1822- ACS establish black settlement
o Monrovia, Liberia
o Actual colonization not practical
1820 – 1860: 12k settle in Africa
o Vs. growth of slave population by 2.5 million
1831- William Lloyd Garrison
o Abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator
o = beginning of radical abolition movement
Advocate immediate emancipation, in ALL states/territories,
NO compensation for slaveowners
1833- WLG + abolitionists form AAS
o Use to step up attacks
o Condemn, burn Constitution as proslavery
o “no Union with slaveholders”
o Repent of sins and free your slaves!
WLG radical abolitionism split in movement
WLG = moral crusade
Others? POLITICAL action
Liberty party formed in 1840
o Political base in north
Pledge? An end to slavery through political, legal means
o One candidate in 1840, 1844: James Birney
Free African Americans, escaped slaves = outspoken critics
of slavery
Frederick Douglass
o Self-educated, former slave
o First-hand account of brutality of slavery
o Follower of WLG- advocate political & direct action to end slavery,
prejudice
o 1847- The North Star
Harriet Tubman, David Ruggles, Sojourner Truth, William
Still
o Organize effort to assist fugitive slaves escape (north, Canada)
David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet
o Northern African Americans
o Advocate most radical solution- REVOLT!
1831- VA slave, Nat Turner, revolt vs. whites
o 55 white skilled
o retaliation, hundreds of African Americans killed
• End of revolt
Effect? Fear of uprisings increases stricter slave codes
o Prior to rebellion, some antislavery sentiment
o After, fear silences opposition
• Rebellion, WLG strong words
Society still RURAL, but cities growing
Impact of IR on cities change family dynamics
o Little “economic value” to having a lot of children
• vs. on farm, rural areas
• birth control to reduce family size
o More affluent women have free time
• For leisure- religious, moral organizations
NY Female Moral Reform Society
o Work to prevent poor female youth from lives of prostitution
Role of women w/in family change due to IR
On farm
o Men = moral leaders
In city
o Men work outside home = gone most of the time
o women @ home take charge of household, children
o = moral leaders
Idealized view of women as moral leaders = cult of
domesticity
Antislavery reformers resent how men relegate them to
secondary roles in movement
o Not able to fully participate in discussions, leadership roles
Sarah & Angelina Grimke
o Object to male opposition to antislavery activities
o Letter on the Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes,
1837
Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
o Launch campaign for women’s rights
o Had been banned from speaking at antislavery convention
1848- leading feminists met in NY
= 1st women’s rights convention in US history
Issue document modeled after DOI
“Declaration of Sentiments”
o “all men and women are created equal”
o List of grievances against laws, customs of discrimination against
women
After Seneca Falls Convention, Stanton & Susan B. Anthony
launch campaign for = voting rights, legal/property rights
1850s- issue overshadowed by slavery