Transcript Unit 3 - Weebly

Unit 3
Reform Movements In the
Antebellum United States
American Transcendentalism
• Literary/philosophical movement began in
1830s
• Reality through “reason”
– This is not enlightenment “reason” 
– Person’s ability to access beauty and truth
through instinct and emotion
– spirituality (direct access to benevolent God,
not organized religion or ritual), divinity of
humanity, nature, intellectual pursuits, social
justice
Just think of it as another form of pre-war
revivalism…even though its not strictly religious
American Transcendentalism
• Literary/philosophical movement began in
1830s
• Reality through “reason”
– This is not enlightenment “reason” 
– Person’s ability to access beauty and truth
through instinct and emotion
– spirituality (direct access to benevolent God,
not organized religion or ritual), divinity of
humanity, nature, intellectual pursuits, social
justice
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
A few thoughts from
“Self-reliance” -Emerson
• “There is a time in every man’s education when
he arrives at the conviction that envy is
ignorance; that imitation in suicide…”
• “Trust thyself…”
• “What I must do is all that concerns me,
not what people think…”
• “…to be great is to be misunderstood”
Imma go to the woods and think!
• “I went into the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and
see if I could not learn what it has to teach, and not,
when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
• “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
• “If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Let him step to the music he hears, however measured
or far away.”
• Can we see this as an early environmentalist
movement?
“Civil Disobedience”
• Thoreau’s essay urging passive, non-violent
resistance to governmental policies to which
an individual is morally opposed.
Emerging Culture and Reform
Issues/Themes Addressed by the
Antebellum (Pre-Civil War)Artists
•
•
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Westward Expansion
American Nationalism/American Mythology
Racism, Native Cultures
Nature
Progress
The Hudson River School:
1820s-1870
• The power of nature, insignificance of man
In Nature’s Wonderland
Thomas Doughty, 1835
Niagara
Frederic Church, 1857
View of the Catskills, Early Autumn
Thomas Cole, 1837
View from Mt. Holyoke: The Oxbow
Thomas Cole, 1836
The Course of Empire: The Savage State
Thomas Cole, 1834
The Course of Empire: The Arcadian
or The Pastoral State - Thomas Cole, 1836
The Course of Empire: Consummation
Thomas Cole, 1836
The Course of Empire: Destruction
Thomas Cole, 1836
The Course of Empire: Desolation
Thomas Cole, 1836
Kindred Spirits – Asher Durand, 1849
Watercolors by John Audubon
Stanley Hawk
Barred Owl
The Influence of Greece
and Rome
Neo-Classical Architecture:
U. S. Customs House, 1836
Jefferson Rotunda
(Univ. of VA), 1819-26
The Capitol Rotunda
Patriotism and
American Mythology
The Landing of the Pilgrims
Unknown Artist, 1830s
Washington Crossing the Delaware
Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1851
George Washington
Horatio Greenough, 1841
Our Banner in the Sky - Frederic Church, 1861
The American
Frontier
Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees - Charles
Bird King, 1821
Buffalo Bull’s Back Fat, Head Chief,
Blood Tribe - George Caitlin, 1832
Mato-Tope – Karl Bodmer, 1830s
Osage Scalp Dance
John Mix Stanley, 1845
Last of the Race – Tompkins Matteson, 1847
Dying Indian Chief Contemplating the Progress of Civilization
Thomas Crawford, 1857
American Literature
• Nathaniel Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter
– Inspired by the Witchcraft trials
• Washington Irving- “Rip Van Winkle” & “The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow”
– First American writer to gain fame in Europe
• Herman Melville- Moby Dick
– Desire to kill a white whale
• Edgar Allen Poe- “Murders in Rue Morgue”
– Wrote the 1st detective stories
• Walt Whitman- Leaves of Grass
– Unrhymed poems about ordinary people
Questions to Ponder
• Why/how did “democratization” encourage religion
among the masses in the U.S.?
• How did the 2nd Great Awakening change the
relationship between the middle class and the working
class?
• Compare/Contrast the attitudes of American
churches/believers with those in Britain
• Analyze the methods used by the two authors…how do
they prove or not prove their points
Reform Movements
• Temperance Movement
– Goal = To reduce manufacture and consumption
of alcohol
• Education Reform
– Horace Mann
– State Funded Schools, Mandatory Attendance
• Prison Reform
– Separate mentally ill from criminals
– State-funded prisons
Utopian Movements
• Blame Thomas More…I
mean St. Thomas More
• Thank Henry VIII for the
Saint part
Utopian Communities
Name of
Settlement
Philosophy
Social
Structure
Legal System
Economic
System
Shakers
Christian
perfectionism
Men and women
equal and
sexless
Religioncelibacy
Furniture
Oneidas
Marriage=
complex,
Perfection can
be achieved
Polygamy
Complex Marriage
Communal living
Egalitarian
Religionperfectionism
Steel traps and
silverware
Mormons
Belief that theirs
is the true
Christianity
Polygamy
Religion
Mixed
Brook Farm
Transcendentalism
egalitarian
Social Mores
Farming
Utopian Movements
• You think these worked?
Other Reforms
• Temperance Movements
– Evangelical Protestantism
– Women
• Why women?
– Surplus of grain = increased whiskey production
• Thoughts on why?
– Divisions
• Liquor only or also beer and wine?
• Protestants vs. Catholics
• Immigrants?
Other Reforms
• Education
• Horace Mann
• Push for universal public education
– State supported schools nationwide by 1850s
– 1860 = North 94% Literate, South 83% (White
population)
• Institutions for handicapped
Other Reforms
• Jail, Rehabilitation Reform
• Asylum Movement
– Treatment of Mentally Ill
• Prison Reform
– Real Prisons
– No longer imprisoned debtors and paupers
– Strict Discipline
Feminism
• Why now?
Abolition Movements
• Lets hold off on that for a second and switch
to politics