Second Great Awakening American commitment to organized religion is weakened. Preachers of this time rejected the Calvinistic belief that God predetermined ones salvation or damnation ( heaven vs. hell) Emphasized individual responsibility for seeking salvation and that one could improve themselves and society Began in Kentucky on the frontier Circuit-riding ministers Mainly Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterian People must readmit God and Christ into their daily lives; all people could attain grace through faith Revivalism- a tendency or desire to revive a former custom or practice (Religion in this case)
American Writers Romanticism: feeling over reason, inner spiritually over external rules, nature over environments created by humans Transcendentalism: overcome the limits of the mind and let their soul reach out to embrace the beauty of the universe Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, Self-Reliance (transcendentalism) Washington Irving: Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter Herman Melville: Moby Dick Emily Dickinson: American poet Walt Whitman: O Captain, My Captain, Leaves of Grass
American Writers: James Fenimore Cooper The Last of the Mohicans First American novelist
Reformers and their Reforms Lyman Beecher- Presbyterian Minister Temperance limit the amount of alcohol (moderation) Alcohol can lead to the downfall of man Horace Mann Father of education Public education State board of education
Utopia Perfect society Communist Brook Farm- Nathanial Hawthorne’s “Blithedale Romance” Oneida-upstate NY “Complex Marriage” Shakers- communal ownership of good Strict separation of the sexes in both work and life
Reformers: Elizabeth Cady Stanton Advocated for women’s suffrage Seneca Falls Convention: wrote the Declaration of Sentiments; all men and women were equal Launched the modern women’s rights movement Some changes did happen but overshadowed by slavery