1821 – 1855
Challenges to traditional values & institutions Social injustice & instability The emergence of mvmts. to “reform” the nation Women’s rights, school reform, abolition Optimistic faith in human nature
Decay of piety Deism – “rational” religious doctrines Universalism & Unitarianism – salvation was available to all
Decline in commitment to organized churches & denominations Most Ams. continued to hold strong religious beliefs Second Great Awakening (~1801)
Efforts to fight spread of religious rationalism Methodism founded by John Wesley Revivals – religious gatherings designed to awaken religious faith
Combined a more active piety w/a belief in a God whose grace could be attained through faith & good works Individual & social reform were possible Influential leaders – Charles Finney & Lyman Beecher
Female converts outnumbered male Enslaved blacks interpreted the Christian message as a promise of freedom In the East, many free African Americans worshipped in separate churches
John Lewis Krimmel, Black People's Prayer Meeting, watercolor, ca. 1811, depicting a Methodist service in Philadelphia
Gabriel Prosser’s plan for slave rebellion (1800) Captured & hanged Spirit of revivalism was also strong among Nat. Ams. – Handsome Lake
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints (Mormon)
Romanticism Am. artistic mvmt. Valued strong feeling & mystical intuition over calm rationality Appealed to feelings & intuitions of ordinary people Innate love of goodness, truth, & beauty
Washington Irving James Fennimore Cooper (The Last of the Mohicans) Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
Herman Melville (Moby Dick) Nathaniel Hawthorne (Scarlet Letter) Edgar Allen Poe
Philosophical & literary mvmt. Emphasized living a simple life Celebrated truth found in nature & in personal emotion & imagination Ralph Waldo Emerson (“Nature” & “Self-Reliance) Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
Experimental groups who lived together & tried to create a perfect place Brook Farm in West Roxbury, MA Nathaniel Hawthorne Robert Owen & New Harmony (IN) 1825 Individual freedom vs. demands of communal society
Oneida community in upstate NY rejected traditional notions of family & marriage, founded by John Humphrey Noyes Shakers commitment to complete celibacy, founded in late 1774 by Mother Ann Lee in England
Reform mvmts. were mostly led by women Temperance Education Care of the poor, the handicapped, & the mentally ill Treatment of criminals Rights of women
Protestant revivalism – crusade against personal immorality Temperance – crusade against drunkenness Am. Temperance Society (1826) became a major national mvmt.
Education Effort to produce a system of universal public education Horace Mann – education was a way to protect democracy
Principle of tax- supported elementary schools est. in every st. by 1850s Quality of public ed. varied widely Institutions to help disabled
Rehabilitation Prison & hospital reform Mental health reform Dorthea Dix
Early opposition to slavery Colonization – effort to resettle African Ams. in Africa or Caribbean American Colonization Society (1817) Liberia est. 1821
The Liberator (1831) Opponents of slavery should talk about its damage Demand immediate, unconditional, universal abolition of slavery Extension of all the rights of Am. citizenship
American Antislavery Society (1833) Frederick Douglass founded North Star Abolitionism divided, growing radicalism of Garrison Division w/in Am. Antislavery Society (1840)
Underground railroad Personal liberty laws (TBJ vs. FSL) SCOTUS (1842) Liberty Party (1840) stood for “free soil”
1 st Am. feminist mvmt. Lucretia Mott Elizabeth Cady Stanton Dorothea Dix Harriet Beecher Stowe Drawing parallels between plight of women & slaves
Seneca Falls Convention (NY, 1848) Adopted “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions” Sojourner Truth
Family as an institution, inspired new conceptions of its role in Am. Society Traditional inequalities remained Oberlin College (OH, 1837) Mt. Holyoke College (MA, 1837)
“Cult of domesticity” – new domestic ideology Women as guardians of “domestic virtues” Custodians of morality Detached from public world Had real meaning for relatively affluent women