1. CHAPTER 11 Religion and Reform 1800–1860
James A. Henretta
Eric Hinderaker
Rebecca Edwards
Robert O. Self
America’s History Eighth Edition America: A Concise History Sixth Edition
CHAPTER 11
Religion and Reform
1800–1860
Copyright © 2014 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

2. 1. Describe the couple in this image. What are they doing
1. Describe the couple in this image. What are they doing? (Answer: On the left is Hannah Roberts and on the right is Lewis Tebbets. They are gazing at one another, holding a book between them. Roberts is holding a handkerchief, Tebbets a bouquet of flowers. They are well-dressed and standing on an ornate floor or rug. They are either about to be married, or in the midst of a wedding.)
2. What does the couple’s stance and position convey about their relationship to one another? (Answer: Roberts and Tebbets are gazing into one another’s eyes, which signifies their love and intimacy. The image suggests that theirs is a union based on love, and not economic expediency. Their common grasp of the book suggests that they share similar values—possibly religious. The fact that his vest matches her dress might also suggest their complementarity and suitability for one another. They might be holding gifts for one another—she is holding the handkerchief she will give to him; he is holding the flowers he will give to her.)

3. I. Individualism: The Ethic of the Middle Class
A. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism 1. Transcendentalism 2. The lyceum movement
I. Individualism: The Ethic of the Middle Class
A. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Transcendentalism
1. Transcendentalism – Intellectual movement rooted in Unitarianism; admired European romanticism (Kant, Coleridge) which rejected Enlightenment thinking for a celebration of human passions and mysteries; Unitarians believed in God as a single being (not Father, Son, Holy Spirit like other Protestants); Emerson wanted to explore “individuality”; moved to Concord, MA, after resigning from a ministerial position in Boston; believed people were trapped by traditions; ideal setting for transcendent discovery was under an open sky, in solitary communion with nature; work was destroying spiritual lives.
2. The lyceum movement – Beginning in 1826, the movement was a way to reach people through public lectures; fostered discussion; modeled after Aristotle’s public lectures in ancient Greece; was attractive to the middle class in the North and the Midwest, not the South; Massachusetts had more than 150 lyceums in 1839; Emerson was the most popular speaker.

5. I. Individualism: The Ethic of the Middle Class
B. Emerson’s Literary Influence 1. Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman 2. Darker Visions
I. Individualism: The Ethic of the Middle Class
B. Emerson’s Literary Influence
1. Thoreau, Fuller, and Whitman – Henry David Thoreau: built cabin at Walden Pond after his brother’s death, lived there for 2 years alone, and published Walden, or Life in the Woods about his search for meaning in the natural world; Margaret Fuller: explored freedom for women, edited The Dial (transcendentalist journal) and published Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1844); men and women were capable of a relationship with God; women deserved independence; literary critic for New York Tribune; Walt Whitman: printer, teacher, journalist, and newspaper editor; published Leaves of Grass (1855) as a collection of poetry celebrating the desire to break from tradition.
2. Darker Visions – Nathaniel Hawthorne: pessimistic worldview, published The Scarlet Letter (1850) criticizing excessive individualism; Herman Melville: critic of transcendentalist focus on the individual, published Moby Dick (1851) in which a personal quest brings death. 5

6. II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture
A. The Utopian Impulse 1. Mother Ann and the Shakers 2. Albert Brisbane and Fourierism
II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture
A. The Utopian Impulse
1. Mother Ann and the Shakers – In 1774, Lee Ann Stanley (Mother Ann) founded the Shakers, the first successful American communal movement; in 1770, she had a vision of herself as Christ on earth; believed sexual lust had been the downfall of Adam and Eve; known as “Shakers” for dancing during service; Mother Ann died in 1784; followers created twenty more communities in New England, New York, and Ohio to celebrate her. Because the Shakers disdained sexual intercourse, they relied on conversions and adoption of orphans to increase their numbers; by 1900, they virtually disappeared, leaving their legacy of simple and beautiful furniture.
2. Albert Brisbane and Fourierism – Charles Fourier predicted imminent decline of individual property rights and capitalist values; his leading American disciple was Albert Brisbane; he believed Fourierist socialism would liberate workers from capitalist employers; members of communities known as phalanxes would own property in common; they believed in liberation of women as well as men. During the 1840s, Fourierists founded one hundred cooperative communities in western New York and the Midwest; most collapsed over conflicts about work responsibilities and social policies, revealing difficulty of maintaining utopian communities without charismatic leaders or compelling religious visions.

9. II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture
A. The Utopian Impulse (cont.)
3. John Humphrey Noyes and Oneida
II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture
A. The Utopian Impulse (cont.)
3. John Humphrey Noyes and Oneida – Noyes was both charismatic and religious; rejected marriage, calling it a major barrier to sinless perfection on earth; embraced “complex marriage” in which all members of community are married to one another; rejected monogamy to free women from their status as husbands’ property; female followers cut their hair short and wore pantaloons; in 1848, Noyes founded community near Oneida, New York; used his position to manipulate the sexual lives of his followers. By the mid-1850s, the Oneida settlement had two hundred residents and used profits from steel animal trap manufacturing to diversify into silverware production; Noyes fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for adultery; community abandoned complex marriage but retained its cooperative spirit.

11. II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture
B. Joseph Smith and the Mormon Experience 1. Joseph Smith 2. Brigham Young and Utah
II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture
B. Joseph Smith and the Mormon Experience
1. Joseph Smith – Raised in central New York (1805–1844); believed that he had been chosen to receive a revelation; published The Book of Mormon (1830) telling the story of an ancient civilization that migrated to the West and was visited by Jesus Christ after the Resurrection; encouraged patriarchal authority, frugality, hard work, a church-directed society, moral perfection; struggled to find a home for his church where it would not face harassment; eventually settled in Illinois; argued that a revelation to him had justified polygamy; charged with treason in 1844 when it was believed he was conspiring to build a community in Mexico; murdered in jail along with his brother.
2. Brigham Young and Utah – Led Smith’s disciples; about 6,500 Mormons fled the U.S. for Mexico after his death; eventually settled in the Great Salt Lake Valley; created a planned agricultural community; named Young as governor when Utah became part of the U.S. in 1850; led to a short “Mormon War” over the issue of polygamy and possible nullification; those who accepted federal authority would not be prosecuted for polygamy (banned finally in 1896). 11

14. II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture
C. Urban Popular Culture 1. Sex in the City 2. Minstrelsy 3. Immigrant Masses and Nativist Reaction
II. Rural Communalism and Urban Popular Culture
C. Urban Popular Culture
1. Sex in the City – Population growth in urban areas generated a new urban culture; young men and women left rural areas for the cities and found life there very difficult; low wages in factories for men, and women worked as domestics where sexual exploitation was common; sex for sale was increasingly common as married men had mistresses and working men went to “bawdy houses”; prostitutes or “public” women advertised in the open; sexual identity was experimented with in the cities without parents having control over young peoples’ daily lives.
2. Minstrelsy – Rat and terrier fights at local halls and performances of traditional theater were popular; most popular were minstrel shows in which white actors performed in blackface; historians have labeled these shows both racist caricature and social criticism; began around 1830; John Dartmouth Rice’s character “Jim Crow” was famous in New York City; minstrels also stereotyped Irish immigrants’ drinking of alcohol, and made fun of women’s rights activists and elite white men.
3. Immigrant Masses and Nativist Reaction – Immigrants wanted to be viewed as “white”; Irish joined American Catholic Churches and became part of the Democratic Party; nativists wanted to stop immigration; gangs formed in New York City, and violence erupted between immigrant groups and native-born white Americans.

15. 1. Describe the setting of this image. Who is depicted here
1. Describe the setting of this image? Who is depicted here? What are they doing? (Answer: Image depicts an urban scene, at night. The African American man at left is an oyster vendor, selling his goods to the city folk who are out at night. Next to him is a well-dressed man eating oysters. The woman at the center is engaging with the two young men in blue, who seem to be taken with her.)
2. What does this image suggest about daily life in cities during the first half of the nineteenth century? (Answer: Cities were diverse in terms of race and class. There were free black residents such as the black oysterman in this image. There were also young adults who were living away from their families. Young men, like the two in blue, were out and about at night, perhaps taking in entertainment. There were also unattached women—the one in this image is probably intended to be a prostitute—and the widespread availability of commercialized sex.)
3. Imagine that you are a social reformer in the 1840s who has been inspired by the Second Great Awakening. How would you respond to this scene? (Answer: A mid-nineteenth century social reformer would have seen this scene as an example of the temptations that came with urban life, and an indication of the problems that required solutions. While he or she would not have objected to the oysterman, the reformer would be intensely critical of the young men’s interaction with the prostitute. Reformers at this time sought to save and rescue women engaged in commercialized sex, and to convince men not to take part in such activity.)

17. III. Abolitionism
A. Black Social Thought: Uplift, Race Equality, and Rebellion 1. David Walker’s Appeal 2. Nat Turner’s Revolt
III. Abolitionism
A. Black Social Thought: Uplift, Race Equality, and Rebellion
1. David Walker’s Appeal – Northern free blacks tried to focus on social uplift; white mobs attacked blacks in northern cities; Walker’s writing was in response to attacks. Walker was a free black from North Carolina who had moved to Boston; self-educated; ridiculed religious arguments of slaveholders, justified slave rebellion, and warned of a slave revolt if blacks were denied justice much longer. In 1830, called a national convention of free black leaders in Philadelphia; group demanded freedom and “race equality” but refused to endorse Walker’s radical call for revolt or the traditional program of black uplift.
2. Nat Turner’s Revolt – Turner, a slave in Virginia who taught himself to read, was separated from wife by a new master and had a religious vision; in August 1831, led a revolt with relatives and friends; killed 55 whites; he was eventually caught and hanged. The Virginia assembly increased slave codes, prohibited anyone from teaching slaves to read, and limited movement of black people in the state.

21. III. Abolitionism
B. Evangelical Abolitionism 1. William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, and Angelina and Sarah Grimké 2. The American Anti-Slavery Society
III. Abolitionism
B. Evangelical Abolitionism
1. William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, and Angelina and Sarah Grimké – Garrison, a printer in Massachusetts, founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society and published The Liberator; later established American Anti-Slavery Society with Weld and other abolitionists; appealed to religious people; Weld published The Bible Against Slavery (1837); Grimké sisters were raised in South Carolina, converted to Quakerism, and moved to Pennsylvania; with Weld, the sisters published American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839), which sold more than 100,000 copies that year.
2. The American Anti-Slavery Society – Printed thousands of pamphlets using steam-powered presses; “great postal campaign” (1835) sent more than a million pamphlets; utilized fugitive slaves to tell their stories; established the Underground Railroad to help fugitives; petitioned Congress (1835) to demand abolition in the District of Columbia, end interstate slave trade, and prohibit new slave states. 21

22. 1. Describe this image. What is presented here
1. Describe this image. What is presented here? (Answer: Pages from an alphabet book dating from the mid-nineteenth century.)
2. Who produced this book? What was the audience for it? (Answer: The book was produced by Quakers for children. It was intended to teach the alphabet but also to teach them about the evils of slavery and the need for abolition.)
3. What are the values and ideology that underlie the messages conveyed in this book? (Answer: The messages are religious, arguing, for example, that the Heavenly Father views black and white people as equals. They are also informed by natural rights ideology—black and white people are fundamentally equal and should have the same rights.)

24. III. Abolitionism
C. Opposition and Internal Conflict 1. Attacks on Abolitionism 2. Internal Divisions
III. Abolitionism
C. Opposition and Internal Conflict
1. Attacks on Abolitionism – Movement was a minority (about 10 percent of northerners supported); slaveholders opposed/attacked the movement for political, social, and economic reasons; white men and women almost universally opposed “amalgamation,” racial mixing/intermarriage. whites in the North attacked churches, temperance halls, homes, and conventions of abolitionists; race solidarity was stronger in the South but existed in the North as well. In 1836, Congress passed the “gag rule” to keep abolitionists from petitioning; remained in place until 1844.
2. Internal Divisions – Within the movement, activists disagreed; some were critical of women addressing mix-gendered audiences and of Garrison’s support for women’s rights; Garrison’s opponents founded a new organization, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

26. IV. The Women’s Rights Movement
A. Origins of the Women’s Movement 1. Moral Reform 2. Improving Prisons, Creating Asylums, Expanding Education
IV. The Women’s Rights Movement
A. Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement
1. Moral Reform – Religious women wanted to help other women; middle-class women in New York City founded the Female Moral Reform Society to curb prostitution and to protect single women from moral corruption; members visited brothels, prayed, and sang hymns.
2. Improving Prisons, Creating Asylums, Expanding Education – Dorothea Dix (1801–1887) was emotionally abused by an alcoholic father in Massachusetts; wanted to save children from vice; became a published author; in 1841, began a campaign to improve care for the mentally ill; started asylum-building movement to separate the mentally ill from criminals (previously held together in prisons); women supported school movement of Horace Mann in Massachusetts; recruited well-educated women to be teachers.

27. IV. The Women’s Rights Movement
B. From Black Rights to Women’s Rights 1. Abolitionist Women 2. Seneca Falls and Beyond
IV. The Women’s Rights Movement
B. From Black Rights to Women’s Rights
1. Abolitionist Women – Women were central to antislavery movement; Harriet Jacobs wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, describing forced sexual relations with her master; Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin pinpointed sexual abuse of women as profound moral failing of slavery; African American lecturer Maria Stewart spoke about slavery to mixed audiences first in Boston; Angelia and Sarah Grimké attacked slavery and argued that women have a claim to equal civic rights. By 1840, abolitionist women asserted that traditional gender roles resulted in the domestic slavery of women.
2. Seneca Falls and Beyond – During the 1840s, women’s rights activists devised a pragmatic program of reform, demanding stronger legal rights for married women, including property ownership, which Mississippi, Maine, Massachusetts, and New York adopted between 1839 and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized Seneca Falls Convention; 70 women and 30 men attended; issued “Declaration of Sentiments”; made a claim for women in public life and criticized the idea of “separate spheres” (women should remain in the private/home as mothers and wives); in 1851, began an effort to gain voting rights; Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), a Quaker who argued against women’s dependence on men, led the campaign for voting rights at mid-century. 27