1. Antebellum Culture and Reform

2. The Ferment of Reform
Period before the Civil War known as the antebellum period
Diverse mix of reformers dedicated themselves to transforming society

3. Antebellum Culture and Reform
Religious Revivalism

4. Religion: The Second Great Awakening
Religious revivals swept through US during early 19th century
Reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the American Revolution
Allowed free will to play a role in salvation

5. The Second Great Awakening
“Spiritual Reform From Within” [Religious Revivalism]
Social Reforms & Redefining the Ideal of Equality
Temperance
Education
Abolitionism
Asylum & Penal Reform
Women’s Rights

6. Revivalism in New York
1823 -> Presbyterian minister Charles G. Finney started radical form of revivalism in upstate New York
Appealed to people’s emotions and fear of damnation -> persuaded thousands to declare their revived faith
Western New York became known as the “burned-over district” for its frequent “hell-and-brimstone” revivals

7. Millennialism
Much of widespread religious belief of the time based on the idea that the world was about to end with the second coming of Christ
William Miller predicted a specific date -October 21, 1844
When nothing happened, Millerites continued as a new religion known as Seventh-Day Adventists

8. Mormons Church of the Latter-Day Saints
Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830
Traced a connection between the Native Americans and the lost tribes of Israel
To escape persecution for beliefs, migrated to the far west under the leadership of Brigham Young
Practice of polygamy aroused the hostility of the US government

9. The Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
1823  Golden Tablets
1830  Book of Mormon
1844  Murdered in Carthage, IL
Joseph Smith ( )

10. The Mormon “Trek”

11. The Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)
Deseret community.
Salt Lake City, Utah
Brigham Young ( )

12. The Mormons

13. Antebellum Culture and Reform
Ideas, Art, and Literature

14. (European Romanticism)
Transcendentalism
(European Romanticism)
Liberation from understanding and the cultivation of reasoning.”
“Transcend” the limits of intellect and allow the emotions, the SOUL, to create an original relationship with the Universe.

15. The Transcendentalist Agenda
Give freedom to the slave.
Give well-being to the poor and the miserable.
Give learning to the ignorant.
Give health to the sick.
Give peace and justice to society.

16. Resistance to Civil Disobedience (1849) “The American Scholar” (1837)
Transcendentalist Intellectuals/Writers Concord, MA
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Henry David
Thoreau
Nature (1832)
Resistance to Civil Disobedience (1849)
Self-Reliance (1841)
Walden (1854)
“The American Scholar” (1837)
R3-1/3/4/5

17. John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886)
The Oneida Community New York, 1848
Humans were no longer obliged to follow the moral rules of the past.
all residents married to each other.
carefully regulated “free love.”
John Humphrey Noyes ( )

18. Demands of Community Life
Secular Utopian Communities
Individual Freedom
Demands of Community Life
spontaneity
self-fulfillment
discipline
organizational hierarchy

19. Brook Farm -> communal experiment West Roxbury, MA
George Ripley ( )
Brook Farm -> communal experiment West Roxbury, MA

20. Original Plans for New Harmony, IN

21. Shakers 6,000 members in various communities by the 1840’s
Held property in common and kept women and men strictly separate (forbidding marriage and sexual relations)
Lack of new recruits -> virtually died out by the mide-1900’s

22. Penitentiary Reform & Mental Hospitals
Dorothea Dix
( )
1821  first penitentiary founded in Auburn, NY
1840’s -> mental patients began receiving professional treatment at state expense

23. Dorothea Dix Asylum

24. Temperance
1826 -> Protestant ministers concerned with the effects of excessive drinking founded the American Temperance Society
German and Irish immigrants largely opposed to temperance movement
Factory owners and politicians supported temperance - reduced crime and poverty and improved worker output
1851 -> Maine became first of 13 states to prohibit manufacture and sale of alcohol before the Civil War

25. 1826 - American Temperance Society “Demon Rum”!
Temperance Movement
American Temperance Society “Demon Rum”!
Frances Willard
The Beecher Family
R1-6

26. Annual Consumption of Alcohol

27. From the first glass to the grave, 1846
“The Drunkard’s Progress”
From the first glass to the grave, 1846

28. 6. Social Reform  Prostitution The “Fallen Woman”
Sarah Ingraham
( )
1835  Advocate of Moral Reform
Female Moral Reform Society focused on the “Johns” & pimps, not the girls.
R2-1

29. Religious Training  Secular Education
7. Educational Reform
Religious Training  Secular Education
MA  always on the forefront of public educational reform * 1st state to establish tax support for local public schools.
By 1860 every state offered free public education to whites * US had one of the highest literacy rates.

30. Horace Mann ( )
“Father of
American Education”
children were clay in the hands of teachers and school officials
children should be “molded” into a state of perfection
discouraged corporal punishment
established state teacher- training programs
R3-6

31. 7. “Separate Spheres” Concept
“Cult of Domesticity”
A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a refuge from the cruel world outside).
Her role was to “civilize” her husband and family.
An 1830s MA minister:
The power of woman is her dependence. A woman who gives up that dependence on man to become a reformer yields the power God has given her for her protection, and her character becomes unnatural!

32. Early 19c Women Unable to vote. Legal status of a minor.
Single  could own her own property.
Married  no control over her property or her children.
Could not initiate divorce.
Couldn’t make wills, sign a contract, or bring suit in court without her husband’s permission.

33. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
R2-6/7
8. Women’s Rights
1840  split in the abolitionist movement over women’s role in it.
London  World Anti-Slavery Convention
Lucretia Mott
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
1848  Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments

34. Seneca Falls Declaration

35. 9. Abolitionist Movement
1816  American Colonization Society created (gradual, voluntary emancipation.
British Colonization Society symbol

36. Abolitionist Movement
Create a free slave state in Liberia, West Africa.
No real anti-slavery sentiment in the North in the 1820s & 1830s.
Gradualists
Immediatists

37. Anti-Slavery Alphabet

38. William Lloyd Garrison (1801-1879)
Slavery & Masonry undermined republican values.
Immediate emancipation with NO compensation.
Slavery was a moral, not an economic issue.
R2-4

39. Premiere issue  January 1, 1831
The Liberator
Premiere issue  January 1, 1831
R2-5

40. The Tree of Slavery—Loaded with the Sum of All Villanies!

41. Other White Abolitionists
Lewis Tappan
James Birney
Liberty Party.
Ran for President in & 1844.
Arthur Tappan

42. Black Abolitionists David Walker (1785-1830)
1829  Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World
Fight for freedom rather than wait to be set free by whites.

43. Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
1845  The Narrative of the Life Of Frederick Douglass
1847  “The North Star”
R2-12

44. Sojourner Truth (1787-1883) or Isabella Baumfree
1850  The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
R2-10

45. Harriet Tubman (1820-1913) “Moses” Helped over 300 slaves to freedom.
$40,000 bounty on her head.
Served as a Union spy during the Civil War.
“Moses”

46. Leading Escaping Slaves Along the Underground Railroad

47. The Underground Railroad

48. The Underground Railroad
“Conductor” ==== leader of the escape
“Passengers” ==== escaping slaves
“Tracks” ==== routes
“Trains” ==== farm wagons transporting the escaping slaves
“Depots” ==== safe houses to rest/sleep