Religion and Reform Movements

In the early 1800s, a movement called the Second Great Awakening began. In colonial days, many American Protestants believed in predestination. During the Second Great Awakening, ministers preached the “doctrine of free will.”

The most important of this new generation of preachers was Charles Finney, who held the first of many religious revivals in Finney and other ministers of different faiths hoped that the emotion of revivals would touch everyone who attended. They tried to convert sinners and urged people to reform their lives.

Many reformers, especially women, supported the temperance movement. During this time, alcohol was widely used in the United States, and alcohol abuse reached epidemic proportions. They pointed out that many women and children suffered at the hands of husbands and fathers who drank too much.

Alcohol Others called for prohibition, a total ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol. Most reformers favored temperance, or moderation in drinking. During the 1850s, nine states passed laws banning the sale of alcohol, but the movement was interrupted by the Civil War.

Many people in U.S. prisons were debtors, not criminals, and they had to stay imprisoned until they could pay off their debts. Other reformers sought to improve the nation’s harsh, abusive prison system. Social reformers, including Dorothea Dix, began investigating conditions in jails.

Dix worked to: Build new, clean, more humane prisons. Changed the law so debtors weren’t sent to prison. Opened new institutions to treat people with mental illnesses instead of sending them to prison.

Abolitionism

By the mid- 1800s, abolitionists called for an immediate end to slavery. The Second Great Awakening inspired further opposition to slavery.

One of the most powerful speakers for abolitionism was Frederick Douglass. A former slave, Douglass escaped to the North and risked recapture by speaking at antislavery rallies. Douglass also published his own antislavery newspaper, the North Star.

Some abolitionists helped people escape from slavery via the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a network of people who secretly helped slaves reach freedom.

Working for the Underground Railroad was illegal and dangerous, and people risked their lives to help runaway slaves. As many as 50,000 African Americans escaped from slavery to freedom in the North or in Canada via the Underground Railroad.

The fugitive slaves were led by “conductors.” They stopped at “stations,” which were often abolitionists’ houses, or churches or caves. Supporters donated clothing, food, and money.

Harriet Tubman was the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. She personally helped more than 300 slaves escape to freedom. Slave owners tried to stop her, offering a $40,000 reward for her capture, but she was never caught.

Abolitionists faced powerful obstacles in the North as well as in the South. Many northerners relied on cotton produced in the South by slave labor. Northerners also feared that freed slaves would take their jobs.

The state of Georgia offered a $5,000 reward for the arrest and conviction of William Lloyd Garrison for libel. Southerners in Congress won passage of a “gag rule” that blocked discussion of antislavery petitions. Northern supporters of slavery sometimes attacked people at antislavery meetings. Defenders of slavery began to act with greater force.

Women's Movement pre–Civil War

Women who were active in social reform movements believed that they could make valuable contributions to American society. Sojourner Truth was one of these women. She inspired the large crowds who came to hear her speak in favor of political rights for women and enslaved African Americans.

Lucretia Mott was a Quaker and an abolitionist who had considerable organizing and public speaking skills. In 1840, Mott traveled to London to attend an international antislavery convention.

There, she met another abolitionist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mott and Stanton were told that women could not take an active role in the London convention. Furious, they decided to hold a convention to advance women’s rights.

The Seneca Falls Convention TimeSummer of 1848 PlaceSeneca Falls, New York ParticipantsMore than 300 women and men attended. Declaration of Sentiments Stanton wrote a Declaration of Sentiments which demanded full equality for women in every area of life. Stanton’s argument was the beginning of the long battle for women’s suffrage.

The Arts in the mid-1800s

Washington Irving Stories“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” “Rip Van Winkle” Famous character Rip Van Winkle was a lazy farmer who slept through the American Revolution. InspirationDutch history of New York

James Fenimore Cooper NovelsThe Deerslayer The Last of the Mohicans Famous character Natty Bumppo was a frontiersman who kept moving westward and criticized the destruction of nature. ImpactCooper’s novels helped American literature gain popularity in Europe.

By the early 1800s, a new artistic movement called Romanticism took shape in Europe. A small but influential group of writers and thinkers in New England developed an American form of Romanticism. Importance of nature, emotions, and imagination.

Humans This movement was called transcendentalism, and its goal was to transcend human reason. Transcendentalists argued that humans should pursue a close link with nature and live simply. Nature Humans seeking beauty, goodness, and truth within their own souls.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a leading transcendentalist, wrote speeches and essays in which he urged Americans to: question the value of material wealth, and pursue higher values instead. rely on principles of individualism to guide their lives and improve society.

Another leading transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau: spent two years living in the woods at Walden Pond, meditating on nature. published Walden, a book in which he urged Americans to live simply.

Like Emerson, Thoreau believed people must judge right and wrong for themselves. He encouraged civil disobedience and once spent a night in jail for refusing to pay taxes that he felt supported slavery. Thoreau’s ideas about civil disobedience and nonviolent protest influenced later leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Hudson River School was a group of artists who painted scenes of the Hudson River valley. Painters of this school sought to stir emotions with the beauty of nature.