THE RISE OF POPULAR RELIGION - Mr. Vogt's Webpage



APUSH

CHAPTER 10 NOTES Part#2

TECHNOLOGY, CULTURE, AND EVERYDAY LIFE 1840-1860

(beginning on page 299)

THE RISE OF POPULAR RELIGION

▪ Religious impulses reinforced American democracy and liberty. Just as American demanded that politics be made accessible to the average person, they insisted that ministers preach doctrines that appealed to ordinary people (Wanted individuals, not ministers in charge of their religious destiny).

▪ Heaven as well as politics became democratized in these years.

▪ The harmony between religious and democratic impulses owed much to a series of religious revivals known as the SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

The Second Great Awakening

▪ First Great Awakening was in 1739 led by ministers like George Whitefield.

- revivals seen as part of the miraculous work of God

▪ Second Great Awakening began in CONN in the 1790s.

- seen more as human inspired

▪ Revivals underwent striking changes that were typified by camp meetings.

▪ They were gigantic revivals in which members of several denominations gathered together in sprawling open-air camps for up to a week to hear revivalists proclaim that the Second Coming of Jesus was near and that the time for repentance was now.

▪ People rolled like logs, jerked their heads, and grunted like animals.

▪ Most successful ministers not college trained.

▪ Critics said that the frontier frenzy for encouraging fleshy lust more than spirituality and complained that more souls were being lost than saved.

▪ Methodists became America’s largest Protestant denomination by 1844, claiming a little over a million members (most successful on the frontier). They said religion was more of the heart than of the mind (which contrasts with New England’s Congregationalists and Presbyterians)

▪ They worked to promote law, order, and a sense of morality on the frontier.

Eastern Revivals

▪ By the 1820s the Second Great Awakening had begun to shift back to the East.

▪ CHARLES G. FINNEY was an Eastern revivalist from western NY. He was a Presbyterian minister.

▪ The Rochester revival had several features that justify Finney’s reputation as the “father of modern revivalism”

o It was a citywide revival in which all denominations participated

o He introduced devices for speeding conversions. One was the “anxious seat”, a bench to which those ready for conversion were led so that they could be made objects of special prayer, and the “protracted meeting”, which went on nightly for up to a week.

▪ Finney believed that people choose to sin, and you don’t have to do it. “Perfectionism” = living without sin.

▪ Sin was not a natural and nearly irresistible behavior, but a voluntary behavior (no one had to sin; their destinies in their own hands).

▪ His ideas came to dominate “evangelical” Protestantism, forms that focused on the need for an emotional religious conversion.

▪ Finney also recognized the importance of female converts – there were many more of them than men.

Critics of Revivals: The Unitarians

▪ The basic doctrine of Unitarianism – that Jesus Christ was less than fully divine – had gained quiet acceptance among religious liberals during the eighteenth century. It was not until the early 19th century that it became its own denomination with its own churches, etc.

▪ They thought moral goodness should be cultivated by a gradual process of “character building” in which the individual learned to model his or her behavior on that of Jesus rather than by a sudden emotional conversion as in a revival.

▪ Revivals didn’t change people permanently and were too showy (lacked substance).

The Rise of Mormonism

▪ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons was a controversial denomination in the 1820s and 1830s

▪ Joseph Smith was its founder

▪ He translated a Book of Mormon in 1827. It tells the story of an ancient Hebrew prophet, Lehi, whose descendants came to American and created a prosperous civilization that looked forward to the appearance of Jesus as its savior. Jesus had actually appeared and performed miracles in the New World, the book claimed, but the American descendants of Lehi had departed from the Lord’s ways and quarreled among themselves. God had cursed some with dark skin; these were the American Indians, who, when later discovered by Columbus, had forgotten their history.

▪ He quickly gained followers.

▪ They eventually settled in Illinois and built a model city, Nauvoo.

▪ He kept having revelations – one being the Mormon practice of having multiple wives, or polygamy. Although Smith did not publicly proclaim polygamy as a doctrine, its practice among Mormons was a poorly kept secret.

▪ He saw himself as a prophet of the kingdom of God and was called a “Second Mohammed”

▪ This was one of a few religions that was created in American.

▪ Reasons for opposition to the Mormons:

- many thought new revelations undermined the Bible

- polygamy was controversial

▪ Hostility against them led to their separation away from the rest of society, and Brigham Young later led them to Utah.

The Shakers

▪ The founder and leader of the Shakers was Mother Ann Lee, the illiterate daughter of an English blacksmith.

▪ The official name was the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing; “Shakers” came from a religious dance that was part of their ceremony.

▪ They were good artisans and known for their furniture (and they invented the clothes pin and the circular saw).

▪ They were hostile to materialism.

▪ She had visions and that is where her doctrines had come from – like abstaining from sex.

▪ By encouraging assimilation into rather than retreat from society, evangelicalism provided a powerful stimulus to the numerous reform movements of the 1820s and 1830s

THE AGE OF REFORM

▪ People wanted to improve society: abolition of slavery, women’s rights, temperance, better treatment of criminals and the insane, public education, and even the establishment of utopian communities were high on various reformers’ agendas.

▪ At a time when women were not allowed to vote, free blacks were excluded from politics, and the major parties avoided controversial issues like slavery and women’s rights, reform movements gave women and blacks the opportunity to influence public issues.

▪ They gave their loyalty to their causes, not to political parties.

▪ Reformers looked at every issue as good v. evil and were on God’s side on every issue (nearly all prominent temperance reformers of the 1820s and 1830s were inspired by revivals).

▪ New England and parts of the Midwest were hotbeds for reform, not so much in the South.

The War on Liquor

▪ Reformers thought that there was too much alcohol consumption and that male indulgences led to problems that affected wives and children.

▪ It became very popular in the second quarter of the 19th c.

▪ 1826- the American Temperance Society was formed.

▪ Most of the members were women (even though all were run by men) and they advocated total abstinence

▪ The main targets were moderate drinkers in the laboring classes. Journeymen and apprentices and factory workers used to pass the jug during working hours, which would be very dangerous for them. Temperance reformers soon gained support from factory owners, in part because of the disciplined work that was demanded.

▪ After the Panic of 1837, a new stage of temperance sprang up in the form of the Washington Temperance Societies. These men said that drink destroyed their lives and that they gave it up and things got much better (during a depression temperance was seen as a means to economic survival).

▪ Washingtonians reflected revivals. They held “experience meetings” where members described their salvation from drinking (“take care of temperance, and the Lord will take care of the economy”).

▪ As temperance gained support, reformers shifted their calls from individuals to abstain to demands that cities, towns, and even states ban all traffic in liquor.

▪ This was controversial even within the movement (legal prohibition)

▪ In 1838 MASS prohibited the sale of distilled spirits in amounts less than fifteen gallons, thereby restricting smaller purchases.

▪ In 1851, Maine banned the manufacture and sale of all intoxicating beverages (which was successful as the rate of consumption of alcohol in the 1840s was less than ½ that is was in the 1820s).

Public-School Reform

▪ They wanted to attack one-room schoolhouses where children didn’t learn much else besides reading and counting (where students often faced harsh discipline)

▪ District schools, as they were called, enjoyed popular support from rural parents. Reformers thought children needed to be ready for the emerging competitive and industrial economy.

▪ Most articulate and influential of the reformers was Horace Mann of MASS (in New England where industry was strong), he became the first sec. of state’s newly created board of education in 1837. His goals included:

- shifting the burden of financial support for school from parents to the state

- grading the schools (classifying pupils by age and attainment)

- extending the school term form 2-3 months to as many as10 months

- introducing standardized textbooks, and compelling attendance (Mass passed the first compulsory education law in 1852)

- setting up highly structured schools that would occupy most of the child’s time and energy

- spreading uniform cultural values through identical educational experiences

▪ Grading schools was seen as leading to competition between students which would be good in an industrial society.

▪ The McGuffey readers, which sold 50 mill. Copies between 1836-1870, created a common curriculum and preached industry, honesty, sobriety, and patriotism.

▪ School reform was more popular in the North than in the South.

▪ Educational reformers faced challenges from: farmers who were satisfied with their schools, urban Catholics who pointed out that the textbooks used in public schools dispensed anti-Catholic and anti-Irish epithets, the laboring poor argued that compulsory attendance was taking away from the income their children made.

▪ The movement did take off because it appealed to urban workingmen and factories (stressed accountability and punctuality) who supported free tax-supported ed.

▪ Dividing schools into grades allowed more women into the classroom as teachers – By 1900 70% of the nation’s schoolteachers were women (originally women were seen as unable to control a classroom with students ages 3 to 23)

▪ It appealed to Native-born Americans because it allowed an “American” culture to form in the midst of increasing immigration.

▪ School reformers were assimilationists in the sense that they hoped to use public education to give children common values through shared experiences. However, they didn’t assimilate whites with blacks. Blacks were often segregated in different schools.

▪ One of the reason for the success of ed. reform is that its opponents couldn’t unite (rural Protestants and urban Catholics).

Abolition

▪ Antislavery rhetoric flourished during the Revolutionary period, and then lost some of its vigor.

▪ Slavery rose from 1810 with 1.2 million to 1830 to more than 2,000,000

▪ In the 1820s blacks were the most radical opponents to slavery. They did not favor going to Africa because many of them were born here and did not know Africa

▪ WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON became the most famous and controversial white abolitionist in 1831 when he launched his own newspaper The Liberator

o He wanted total equality (social and legal) for slaves

o Black abolitionists supported him.

o He argued for immediate emancipation

▪ David Walker (a Boston free black) published an appeal for a black rebellion to crush slavery.

▪ FREDERICK DOUGLASS and SOJOURNER TRUTH (both former slaves) proved eloquent lecturers against slavery.

▪ AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY (founded in 1817) fought to gradually end slavery by compensating slave owners fro their loss and sending freed blacks back to Africa (only 1,400 sent to Liberia and most were already free blacks).

▪ Relationships between white and black abolitionists were not always harmonious. White abolitionists called for legal equality for blacks but not necessarily for social equality.

▪ Abolitionists were very unpopular amongst the general white population – to the point where they sometimes abused (one abolitionist editor, Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered in Illinois).

▪ Anti-slavery rhetoric did not have the same revivalist fervor as other movements (Protestant churches didn’t rally to abolition the way they did to temperance).

▪ There were disagreements amongst abolitionists – usually dealing with political questions (should there be a separate abolition party).

▪ There was also controversy in the GRIMKE SISTERS – they gave speeches about abolitionists; they were controversial because they drew mixed audiences of men and women to their lectures at a time when it was thought indelicate for women to speak before male audiences. Clergymen chastised them for lecturing men rather than obeying them.

▪ The Grimke sisters also began to ask for equality of women.

▪ Abolitionists flooded Congress with petitions to abolish slavery. Congress implemented a “gag rule” on these petitions it was eventually repealed.

Women’s Rights

▪ 1830s: women could not vote; if married, they could not own property; could not retain their own earnings.

▪ They did get more social recognition (particularly through reform movements), but their place was still seen as the home.

▪ The idea of women as guardians of the family was double-edged. It justified reform activities on behalf of the family, but it undercut their demands for legal equality.

▪ These women started as abolitionists and turned to women’s rights: GRIMKE SISTERS,LUCRETIA MOTT, LUCY STONE, AND ABBY KELLY.

o Mott and Stanton – upset that they were not seated at an abolition conference in London in 1840, which pushed them toward the issue of women’s rights

o Stone – in 1840s was the first woman to lecture solely on women’s rights

▪ The more aggressive reformers gravitated to Garrison (an the idea that slave women were poor, and often faced sexual abuse)

▪ In 1848 Mott and Stanton organized a women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, that proclaimed a Declaration of Sentiments (“all men and women are created equal”). The convention passed twelve resolutions, and only one failed to pass unanimously, even though it did pass – the right for women to vote.

▪ Gains for women were slow.

o They would get small gains and be satisfied for a while

o It was associated with abolition which was unpopular

o It was slowed by the idea of domesticity

o Other reform movements let women participate, so it took some away from demanding full equality

o Issues of temperance and school reform more popular and less controversial

o As some small demands gained some women were satisfied and left the movement

Penitentiaries and Asylums

▪ Reformers also targeted poverty, crime, and insanity by establishing highly regimented institutions

▪ As poverty and crime increased people believed that it could be prevented by being morally good. They though alcohol and broken homes were the cause, not the will of God or wickedness of human nature.

▪ So, they created penitentiaries – prisons marked by an unprecedented degree of order and discipline. They thought that these would bring about the sincere reformation of offenders (whereas the threat of the gallows deterred wrongdoers of the past).

▪ In 1820s to purge offenders’ violent habits, reformers usually insisted on solitary confinement.

▪ For the poor – almshouses for the infirm poor and workhouses for the able-bodied poor. This was “indoor relief”

▪ “outdoor relief” of the past was the supporting of the poor where they lived (which didn’t solve the problem of demoralizing surroundings)

▪ The argument for indoor relief was much the same as the rationale for penitentiaries: plucking the poor from their surroundings and putting them into highly organized institutions.

▪ However, the conditions generally not good.

▪ Dorothea Dix, with the support of Horace Mann and Samuel Howe built insane asylums. By the Civil War, 28 states, 4 cities, and the federal govt. had constructed public mental institutions.

▪ The idealism behind such institutions was genuine, but later generations would questions reformers’ underlying assumptions (that harsh discipline was what these people needed)

Utopian Communities

▪ They sprung up in the 1820s

▪ In 1825 British industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen founded the New Harmony community in Indiana. He believed that the way to perfect social arrangements lay, in turn, in the creation of small planned communities – “Villages of Unity and Mutual Cooperation” containing a perfect balance of occupational, religious, and political groups with educational opportunities and better living conditions.

▪ New Harmony failed – The notions that human character was formed by environment and that cooperation was superior to competition had a potent impact on urban workers for the next half-century.

▪ The most controversial was the Oneida community est. in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes; it challenged conventional notions of religion, property, gender roles, sex, dress, and motherhood. He believed in communism (even with spouses)

▪ BROOK FARM was an experimental community that was both a retreat and a model community (which attracted Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne).

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