CHAPTER 15 – REFORM AND CULTURE

Reviving Religion  1850 ¾ of population went  Relied on Deism (reason rather than revelation)  Deism – rejected original sin of man, denied Christ’s divinity but b/v in a supreme being (Clockmaker)  Unitarian Faith – Begins in New England: B/V God existed in one person (no trinity), stressed goodness of human nature, B/V in free will & salvation through good works, pictured God as a loving father, appealed to intellectuals w/ rationalism & optimism (Emerson embraced this idea)  All these new CRAZY ideas inspired Christians to take back there faith

 1800’s – 2 nd Great Awakening  Resulted in:  Prison Reform  Church Reform  Temperance Movement  Women’s Rights Movement  Abolition of Slavery in the 1830’s - Camp Meetings spread to the masses - East went to West to “Save” Indians = Hmmm...

 Methodists & Baptists = personal conversion, democracy in church affairs, emotionalism  Peter Cartwright – Methodist “Circuit Riders” traveling preacher (Muscular)  Charles G. Finney – Ex lawyer Rochester, NY greatest revival preacher  Encouraged ladies to pray out-loud, spoke out a/g slavery and alcohol

Denominational Diversity  New York w/ its Puritans preached “Hellfire” known as the Burned over District as many as 25,000 people gathered  Millerites (Adventists – named by William Miller) – Christ return Oct 22, 1844  Conservatives were made up of:  Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Unitarians (Eastern, wealthy more educated)  South & West – Methodists or Baptists (converted the most souls to Christ) less rich and less educated  Religion further split the issue of slavery

Utah & the Mormons  Joseph Smith (1830) – Claimed to have found Golden Tablets in NY w/ the Book of Mormon inscribed on them  Founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints  People disliked them B/C = polygamy, drilling militia, voting as a unit  Smith was killed in Jail by an angry Hick mob so, Brigham Young took over & led his followers to Utah in 1846 (Married 27 women had 56 kids)

 Grew quickly by birth & immigration  The issue of Polygamy prevented Utah’s entrance into the Union until 1896

Free School  Was a hated idea at first (handout to poor people)  1828 – The idea won out finally  Teachers were ill-trained / ill-taught  Horace Mann fought for better schools = known as the father of public education  Schools ended up being really expensive for many & blacks were left out from education  Important Educators – Noah Webster (Dictionary & Blueback Speller) William H. McGuffey’s Readers

Higher Learning  2 nd Great Awakening led to school’s being built in the South & the West (Mainly for Pride)  Curriculum focused mainly on Latin, Greek, Math, & moral philosophy  University of North Carolina in 1795  University of Virginia started by Jefferson shortly afterwards

 Women were thought to be corrupted if too educated & were therefore excluded  Emma Willard = Troy Female Seminary 1821  Mary Lyon = Mount Holyoke Seminary 1837  Libraries, public lectures, and magazines flourished

Age of Reform  Opposed – tobacco, alcohol, profanity, & wanted women’s rights  Wanted criminal codes softened = $1 in debt resulted in prison time  Mentally insane were treated badly = Dorthea Dix fought to help them 1843

Demon Rum  Drunkenness was widespread  The American Temperance Society formed at Boston in 1826 = made pamphlets, wrote a novel  Neal S. Dow becomes father of Prohibition  Maine Law of 1851 = prohibited making and sale of liquor

Women in Revolt  Women were better off than in Europe  Many became Spinsters  Women were perceived as: Weak physically and emotionally, but fine for teaching  Men were: strong, crude/barbaric if not guided by the purity of women  Home was the center for women  Wanted to Abolish slavery  Women's movement led by: Lucretia Mott, Suzan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (1st female medical graduate), Margaret Fuller, the Grimke Sisters

 Amelia Bloomer = semi short skirts  Seneca Falls Women’s rights convention 1848 = NY  Declaration of Sentiments = All Men & Women were created equal  Demanded ballots for women  Put aside with the Civil War and Slavery

. Wilderness Utopias  Robert Owen founded New Harmony, IN (1825) though it failed in confusion  Brook Farm – Massachusetts experiment (1841) where 20 intellectuals committed to Transcendentalism (it lasted until ‘46)  Oneida Community — practiced free love, birth control, eugenic selection of parents to produce superior offspring; it survived ironically as a capitalistic venture, selling baskets and then cutlery.  Shakers – a communistic community (led by Mother Ann Lee); they couldn’t marry so they became extinct

Scientific Achievement  Early Americans were interested in practical science rather than pure science (i.e., Jefferson and his newly designed plow).  Nathaniel Bowditch – studied practical navigation and oceanography  Matthew Maury - ocean winds, currents  Writers were concerned with basic science.  The most influential U.S. scientists…  Benjamin Silliman ( ) - pioneer in chemistry geologist (taught in Yale)  Louis Agassiz ( ) - served at Harvard, insisted on original research  Asa Gray ( ) Harvard, was the Columbus of botany  John Audubon ( ) painted birds with exact detail

 Medicine in the U.S. was primitive (i.e., bleeding used for cure; smallpox, yellow fever though it killed many).  Life expectancy was unsurprisingly low.  Self-prescribed patent medicines were common, they were usually were mostly alcohol and often as harmful as helpful.  The local surgeon was usually the local barber or butcher.

Artistic Achievements  U.S. had traditionally imitated European styles of art (aristocratic subjects, dark portraits, stormy landscapes)  was a Greek revival, as they’d won independence from Turks; Gothic forms also gained popularity  Thomas Jefferson was the most able architect of his generation (Monticello and University of Virginia)  Artists were viewed as a wasters of time; they suffered from Puritan prejudice of art as sinful pride

 Gilbert Stuart ( ) - painted Washington and competed with English artists  Charles Willson Peale ( ) painted 60 portraits of Washington John Trumbull ( ) - captured the Revolutionary War in paint in dramatic fashion  During the nationalism upsurge after War of 1812, U.S. painters portrayed human landscapes and Romanticism  “darky” tunes became popular  Stephen Foster wrote Old Folks at Home (AKA Suwannee River, his most famous)

Literature  Literature was imported or plagiarized from England  Americans poured literature into practical outlets (i.e. The Federalist Papers, Common Sense (Paine), Ben Franklin’s Autobiography, Poor Richard’s Almanack)  literature was reborn after the War of Independence and especially after War of 1812

 The Knickerbocker group in NY wrote the first truly American literature  Washington Irving ( ) - 1st U.S. internationally recognized writings, The Sketch Book  James Fenimore Cooper ( ) - 1st US novelist, Leatherstocking Tales (which included The Last of the Mohicans which was popular in Europe)  William Cullen Bryant ( ) – Thanatopsis, the 1st high quality poetry in U.S.

Transcendentalist  Literature dawned in the 2nd quarter of 19th century with the transcendentalist movement (circa 1830)  transcendentalism clashed with John Locke (who argued knowledge came from reason); for transcendentalists, truth came not by observation alone, from with inner light  it stressed individualism, self-reliance, and non-conformity  Ralph Waldo Emerson was popular since the ideal of the essay reflected the spirit of the U.S.  he lectured the Phi Beta Kappa Address “The American Scholar”  he urged U.S. writers throw off European tradition  influential as practical philosopher (stressed self-government, self-reliance, depending on self)  most famous for his work, Self Reliance

 Henry David Thoreau  He condemned slavery and wrote Walden: Or life in the Woods  He also wrote On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, which was idealistic in thought, and a forerunner of Gandhi and then Martin Luther King Jr., saying it is not wrong to disobey an “unjust law”  Walt Whitman wrote Leaves of Grass (poetry) and was “Poet Laureate of Democracy”

Glowing Literary Lights (not associated with transcendentalism)  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - wrote poems popular in Europe such as Evangeline  John Greenleaf Whittier - poems that cried against injustice, intolerance, inhumanity  James Russell Lowell - political satirist who wrote Biglow Papers  Oliver Wendell Holmes - The Last Leaf

 Women writers  Louisa May Alcott - with transcendentalism wrote Little Women  Emily Dickinson – wrote of the theme of nature in poems  Southern literary figure – William Gillmore Simms “the cooper of the south”; wrote many books of life in frontier South during the Revolutionary War

 Edgar Allan Poe - wrote “The Raven” and many short stories  invented modern detective novel and “psychological thriller”  he was fascinated by the supernatural and reflected a morbid sensibility (more prized by Europe)  reflections of Calvinist obsession with original sin and struggle between good & evil  Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter (psychological effect of sin)  Herman Melville - Moby Dick, and allegory between good and evil told of a whaling captain

Writing the Past  George Bancroft – founded the naval academy; published U.S. history book and was known as the “Father of American History”  William H. Prescott - published on the conquest of Mexico, Peru  Francis Parkman - published on the struggle between France and England in colonial North America  Historians were all from New England because they had the most books. Therefore, there became an anti-South bias.