Transcript The Market Revolution, part II: Social and Cultural Changes

The Market
Revolution, part II:
Social and Cultural Changes
1815-1850s
Women and Families
• Middle-class women – “ladies”
o separate spheres for men and women
• separation of home and workplace
• public and private spheres
o the “cult of domesticity” (“cult of true
womanhood”)
• piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity
• guardians of social morality
o new conception of children & family
• loving marriage
• fewer children, each one nurtured
o education, not work training
• married women did not work outside the home
• Working-class women – “wenches”
o worked outside the home
• esp. domestic service, needle trades
• ¼ to ½ men’s wages
“The Sphere of a Woman”
(Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1850)
The Second Great Awakening
• Began in backwoods KY, 1790s
o evangelical “tent revivals”
o enthusiasm
o personal salvation – repentance & redemption
• 1820s: spread across the North
o “perfectibility” – rejection of Calvinism
• faith, willpower, and God’s grace
• Charles Grandison Finney
o emphasized a gentle, loving Jesus over an angry God
• encouraged loving bonds among family members
The Second Great Awakening
• Was all this a ‘middle-class’ reaction to the market
revolution?
o evangelicalism was strongest in those areas most affected by the
Market Revolution
• e.g., the “Burnt-Over District” in western New York state
o most participants & converts were the new urban middle-class
• especially middle-class women, who pressured their husbands,
fathers, etc., to join the new churches and reform movements
• Evangelicalism adapted market values to spiritual needs
o religion reflected the new emphasis on individual
responsibility/power
o replaced fulfillment of community with compassion & social reform
o recaptured moral high ground from those who criticized new
businessmen
• not greedy, exploitative, materialistic, & power-hungry
Industrial Discipline
• Some historians argue that employers pushed
evangelical values on their workers out of self-interest
o transition from semisedentary farming to capitalism required
instilling discipline into their work force
• constant work – less leisure time, no slow seasons
• a clock dictated start, stop, meals, and breaks
o market-economy values: hard work, punctuality, ambition,
sobriety, self-reliance
** 2nd Great Awakening gave these the authority of religious morals**
Antebellum Reform
• 1820s-1830s’ religious revivals 1830s-1840s’ secular
reform
o if individuals could become sinless/perfect, so could society
o millennialism: human faith & will could usher in the 1,000-year era
of God’s kingdom on Earth before the Day of Judgment
 evangelicals had an obligation to reform others’ sinfulness, too
o “moral suasion” – show sinners their error and they will repent
and reform
• “The Empire of Benevolence”
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Sabbatarian movement (no work on the Sabbath)
American Tract Society – pamphlets, Bibles
missionary work to foreign lands, Indians, urban poor, prostitutes…
anti-prostitution, anti-gambling, anti-dueling
treatment of criminals (reformatories/penitentiaries) and the insane (asylums)
public schools (for instilling “proper” Christian values)
temperance (alcohol moderation or total abstinence)
abolitionism
Women and Reform
• Women dominated the ranks of
benevolent reform
o the same middle-class wives and daughters who
filled the pews of the evangelical churches
staffed the reform movements
• Reform movements offered women
access to the public sphere
o they could spread the morality of the home into
the external world
• But they held inferior positions in
reform societies
o men were in charge, women were the rank & file
o women rarely held offices & never spoke in public
Radical Abolitionism
• Evangelicalism and antislavery
o slavery was a sin which must be eradicated from society
o perfectibility meant that racial prejudice could be overcome
• rejected the colonizationist assumption that prejudice was insurmountable
• No more compromise, no gradual emancipation
o slavery was an evil and must be abolished immediately
• Key events of the 1830s
o Walker’s Appeal (1829) and Nat Turner’s revolt
(1831) called attention to slavery
o Garrison’s Liberator made moderation difficult for
many reformers
o British emancipation (1833)
• 1830s: abolitionist organizations spread
across the North
o American Anti-Slavery Society (AAS) founded 1833
Anti-Abolitionism
• But abolitionists remained a small & hated minority
o considered dangerous – blamed for sectional conflict
o most Northerners were outraged/threatened at idea of black equality
o abolitionists were targets of social frustration & fears
• convenient scapegoat for anxieties raised by economic/social changes
o at no point were abolitionists more than about 10% of the Northern population
• Anti-abolitionist mob violence common
o numerous riots against abolitionist speakers and papers
• 1837: abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy killed in Alton, IL
o became a martyr – inspired fellow abolitionists
Abolitionism and
Women’s Rights
• Abolitionism was the reform most open to
female participation
o they held important positions & spoke publicly
• e.g., Sarah & Angelina Grimke
• 1848: Seneca Falls convention
o demanded civil and legal equality
o rewrote the Declaration of Independence to highlight
men’s tyranny over women
o 1850, Worcester: 1st National Women’s Rights Convention
• Every Seneca Falls organizer (male and
female) was active in the abolition
movement
o many of those radical enough to imagine racial equality
could also imagine gender equality
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony
Split in Abolitionism
• In the late 1830s, abolitionism divided into two factions
o in large part over women’s rights
• 1840: Garrison and his allies brought female delegates to the World AntiSlavery Convention in London
• resulting conflict  two separate US organizations
o the other major issue was politics
• Garrison and his allies refused to acknowledge any political system that
recognized slavery and included slaveholders
o WLG condemned the US Constitution as “a covenant with death and an
agreement with Hell,” publicly burning a copy on July 4, 1854
o WLG condemned the Union, emblazoning the motto “No Union with
Slaveholders” on the masthead of the Liberator and organizing a secession
convention in Worcester in 1857 (no one but Garrisonian abolitionists came)
• less radical activists saw politics as a promising means to advance the cause
o 1840: the Liberty Party ran James G. Birney for president
• won 6,800 votes
o 1844: the Liberty Party won 62,000 votes (2.5% of the total)
o in the late 1840s and early 1850s, a handful of abolitionists were elected to
Congress
Significance of Abolitionism
• Abolitionist activism made it increasingly difficult for
Northerners to ignore slavery
o kept the issue of slavery almost constantly in the public eye
o abolitionists consistently interpreted Southern actions to defend slavery as a
plot to control the country and spread slavery – a “Slave Power Conspiracy”
• saw selves as an antislavery equivalent to the Sons of Liberty
• by the mid-1850s, the idea began to catch on and become popular
o yet very few Northerners were ever as radical as the abolitionists
• for the vast majority, the Union and the Constitution would always be much
higher priorities than their dislike of slavery
• Meanwhile, abolitionism activism was central to Southerners’
growing defensiveness & extremism
o white Southerners greatly exaggerated the popularity of abolitionism in North as well
as its influence among slaves in the South – an “Abolitionist Conspiracy”
• this perceived antislavery attack  development of proslavery defense
** In the late 1840s and 1850s, this fear of Northern antislavery fanaticism led
Southern leaders to be increasingly proactive in protecting slavery – which led
them to take actions that even moderate Northerners saw as threatening **
• result: a vicious cycle of proslavery and antislavery defensiveness and escalating
sectional conflict