Religion & Reform
Religion & Reform
A Religious Awakening
The Second Great Awakening
The Second Great Awakening profoundly influenced
American life. Church membership skyrocketed.
Reawakened religious feeling moved Americans to work
for a wide variety of social reforms.
Second Great Awakening – Religious revival
movement in the first half of the 1800s.
Revivalist – Preacher who works to renew the importance of religion in
American life.
The Second Great Awakening began on the frontier in Kentucky and then spread north and south, reaching the cities of the Northeast in the 1820s.
Hundreds of preachers, including Charles Grandison Finney, set up revivalist
camps in rural areas and attracted thousands of converts throughout the
country. The converted often became so frenzied that they would roll, jerk,
shake, shout, and even bark in excitement.
Evangelical – Style of worship meant to elicit powerful emotions
to gain converts.
African Americans Embrace Spirit
Many preachers of the Second Great Awakening welcomed African Americans at their revivals. However, some African Americans established their own, separate churches.
In 1816, several of these churches united to become the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.
By 1826, the AME Church had nearly 8,000 members.
New Religious Groups Form
The Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon
Church, was founded by Ohioan Joseph Smith in 1830.
Mormons believed God had entrusted them with a new
set of scriptures called the Book of Mormon.
Because Smith also advocated polygamy, Mormons
faced intense hostility and persecution from Protestants
throughout the Midwest.
An angry Illinois mob murdered Smith in 1844, his disciple
Brigham Young took charge of the church and led a mass
migration to the desert around the Great Salt Lake.
There the Mormons converted the barren lands
into an oasis suitable for growing crops. Utah,
the territory settled by the Mormons, did not
become a state until 1896, when Mormons
agreed to abandon the practice of polygamy.
Members of Unitarian churches saw God as one being, instead of the traditional trinity (three beings) and created their own church around the ideas.
Catholics & Jewish People Face Discrimination
Members of the Roman Catholic Church faced harsh discrimination in the early 1800s. Many Protestants viewed Catholicism as incompatible with American ideals of democracy.
Poor Irish Catholics faced discrimination because they
had little money, they would work for extremely low wages,
which threatened other workers.
Jewish people also faced discrimination. Until late in the 19th century, Jews were barred from holding political office in many parts of the U.S.
Utopian Communities
During the early 1800s, dozens of groups of Americans sought to improve their lives in a unique way. They chose to distance themselves from society by setting up communities based on unusual ways of sharing property, labor, and family life. These settlements came to be called
utopian communities, or utopias, because they aspired to be perfect communities.
A community of roughly 1,000 Americans in Indiana who believed
socialistic communities could end poverty. The community collapsed in just a few short years.
A community in Massachusetts closely affiliated with the Transcendentalist movement, preached harmony with nature and
modest living. This community collapsed within a few years.
Located in several states and boasted more than half a million members at its height, ultimately dissolved because believers were forbidden to
marry or have sex.
Transcendentalists Advance New Ideas
The New England Transcendentalists argued that not all knowledge comes from the senses and that ultimate truth “transcends” the physical world. Transcendentalists believed in the divinity of man’s inner consciousness and thought that nature revealed the whole of God’s moral law.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman championed self-reliance and a rugged individualism that matched the character of the developing nation.
Review: Religious Awakening
Religion & Reform
A Reforming Society
Reforming Education
The leaders of the Second Great Awakening preached that their followers had a sacred responsibility to improve life on earth. One of the most popular reform movements was in the field of education. There were no public schools that children were required by law to attend, most children did not go to school.
One of the greatest reformers was Horace Mann. Mann advanced
the idea of free public schools that all children were required by law to
attend. The Public School Movement sought to establish a
system of tax-supported public schools.
He argued for:
•state oversight of local schools
•standardized school calendars
•adequate school funding
•abolishment of physical punishment
•establishment of well-educated, professional teachers.
Mann’s influence was felt nationwide. Government-supported public schools became the norm across the nation. The percentage of American children attending school doubled.
Helping the Ill & Imprisoned
A schoolteacher from Mass., Dorothea Dix spearheaded the campaign
to establish publicly funded insane asylums to help the mentally ill.
Her report on the unthinkable treatment of insane women in the state’s
prisons convinced legislators to build the first asylums.
Dix traveled thousands of miles promoting her cause. Dix and others also worked to reform American prisons. Until that time, most people viewed prisons as a place to punish criminals.
Prison reformers, however thought that prisons should make criminals feel sorrow for their crimes.
The prison reform system
is thus sometimes called the penitentiary movement.
Many American prisons followed the Auburn model.
At the Auburn prison, in Central NY, in the 1820s,
prisoners worked with one another during the day in
strict silence but slept in individual cells at night.
The Temperance Movement
Many of the days problems were attributed to the widespread use of
alcohol. In response, reformers launched the temperance movement, an effort to end alcohol abuse and the problems created by it. The Temperance Movement sought to ban the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcohol.
Temperance – Drinking alcholic beverages in moderation.
Neal Dow earned a worldwide reputation for his lectures on alcohol
abuse. As mayor of Portland, ME, he succeeded in securing the passage of the so-called “Maine Law,” which restricted the sale of alcohol.
Within a few years, a dozen states had passed similar laws. Temperance would remain an enduring issue for the next 100 years.
Social Reforms in the Early 1800s
|Causes |Efforts to Reform |Effects |
|Educating all Americans |Public school movement pushes for free schools. |1. Some states fund schools |
| | |2. Schools increase in number |
| | |3. Some taxpayers are reluctant |
|The Mentally ill were imprisoned with |Separate mentally ill from criminals. |1. Mental hospitals are built |
|criminals | | |
| | | |
|Prisons treated inmates in a cruel manner |Dorothea Dix fought for prisoners’ rights. |1. New prisons built that are less cruel. |
| | | |
|Many believed that alcohol caused society’s |Reformers warned the public about effects of alcohol. |1. American Temperance Society is formed. |
|problems. | |2. Laws are passed to restrict alcohol. |
Religion & Reform
The Antislavery Movement
Life Under Slavery
Men, women, and children labored from dawn to dusk at backbreaking tasks.
1. cultivating fields of cotton
2. loading freight onto ships
3. preparing meals in scorching hot kitchens
Their “overseers” maintained brutal work routines by punishing
people physically with beatings and whippings, and mentally,
through humiliation and the threat of being separated from
family members. Often, enslaved people were not allowed to
learn to read, and family members who were separated
never heard from each other again.
Surviving Through Spirit & Strength
The miserable conditions forced on enslaved people took their inevitable toll. (Some took their own lives.) In a remarkable triumph of spirit over hardship, most enslaved people maintained their hope and dignity.
1. They worked to maintain networks of family and friends.
2. Parents passed on family stories that children could cherish wherever they might find themselves.
3. They took comfort in their religion.
Resisting Slavery
Many enslaved people did whatever they could to fight back against their oppressors. A loose network of ever-changing escape routes called the Underground
Railroad helped many reach freedom.
In 1831, a slave named Nat Turner led a revolt
near Richmond, VA. Turner believed he had received a sign from God instructing him to lead his people to freedom.
Turner’s group killed nearly 60 people before the local militia stopped their march.
In the process of the manhunt that followed, the local militia killed dozens of African Americans. Turner was captured after six weeks. He and his associates were
executed.
Freedman – A person who has been
freed from slavery.
Life Under Slavery
|Daily Life |Ways of Surviving |Lives of Free Blacks |
|Heavy Labor |Took comfort in their religion. |Suffered from persistent racial discrimination. |
|Treated cruelly. Physical punishment, like beatings |Worked to maintain network of family and friends. |Encouraged to migrate to Africa. |
|and whippings. | | |
| | | |
|Barely enough food, clothing, and shelter. |Kept family traditions alive. |Worked together to establish churches and schools. |
|Family members separated. | |Tried to change and improve the lives of enslaved |
| | |African Americans. |
| | | |
|Most slaves not allowed to learn to read. | | |
The Fight Against Slavery
Many northerners objected to slavery on moral grounds.
By 1804, all states north of Maryland had passed legislation
to end slavery. In 1807, brining new slaves to any part of the
U.S. from Africa was banned.
A growing number of Americans opposed to slavery began
to speak out. Because they wanted slavery abolished, or
ended, they became known as abolitionists. The great reform
movement they led was the abolition movement.
A printer named William Lloyd Garrison, became one of the leading abolitionists. In 1831, Garrison began publishing his own antislavery newspaper, The Liberator . Garrison was in favor of emancipation, or the freeing of enslaved people.
At first he thought, like most abolitionists, that this should be
accomplished gradually over time to minimize economic and
social disruption. But Garrison soon took the radical step of
avocation immediate emancipation and extension of full
political and social rights to African Americans.
Founded by Garrison, in 1833, founded the American Anti-Slavery Society had over 150,000 members nationally by 1844. The Society printed anti-slavery pamphlets and distributed them to churches and community organizations. They insisted that holding slaves was counter to most Americans’ religious ideals.
Frederick Douglass (c.1818-1895)
Born a slave in Maryland and escaped to the North in 1838. Douglass’s booming voice filled lecture halls with touching stories about the difficulty of his life as a slave.
During the Civil War, Douglass, as an adviser to President Lincoln, convinced the President to allow freedmen to fight for the North. Douglass also lent strong support to the women’s movement.
Working Against Abolition
Southern slaveholders intensified their arguments in
support for slavery. They argued that:
1. Slavery was necessary because it formed the foundation of the South’s agricultural economy.
2. Slavery benefited the North, since the North’s textile and shipping industries depended upon southern cotton.
3. Slavery was superior to the wage labor of the North.
4. Some southerners went even further, claiming that Christianity supported slavery, that enslaved people could not survive without slaveholders. (Clearly racist, but many people of the time believed them.)
Most northerners agreed with southern views on slavery.
Examples:
1. In 1835, William Lloyd Garrison was chased through the streets of Boston by and angry mob as a result of his antislavery views.
2. Grimké-Weld wedding, attended by both white an black guests, infuriated local residents that they burned down the antislavery meeting hall.
3. Abolitionist newspaper editor, Elijah Lovejoy’s printing press was destroyed several time. Lovejoy was killed in 1837 while defending the press.
|Question #1 |Question #2 |
| | |
|White city workers would have to compete with freed |White industrialists would have to compete with black |
|blacks for jobs. |entrepreneurs. |
Most white northerners disliked southerners, but they did not want to wrestle with the problems of African Americans. They wanted to stay out of the controversy about slavery. Some even supported the southern position on the Gag Rule.
Gag Rule – Rule lasting from 1836 to 1844 that banned debate
about slavery in Congress.
Debate Over Slavery
|Against |For |
|Abolitionists believed that slavery was immoral. | |
| |Slaveholders argued that slavery formed the basis of the South’s economy. |
| | |
|Slavery was counter to religious beliefs. |The northern economy also depended on slavery. |
| | |
| |Slavery was better than wage labor. |
| | |
| |Christianity supported slavery. |
| |Slaves needed masters. |
| | |
Religion & Reform
The Antislavery Movement
Women Work For Change
The early 1800s, American women lacked
many basic legal and economic
rights.
The drive to reform American
society created by the Second Great
Awakening provided new opportunities for
women.
Sojourner Truth (c.1797-1843): One of the
most effective abolitionist lecturers, a former
slave from New York who held audiences
spellbound with her powerful speech and
arguments.
In the 1820s and 1830s, the Northeast was rapidly industrializing. This provided the first real economic opportunity in the nation’s history for women outside the home.
Thousands of young women went to work in the new mills and factories. This gave women a small degree of economic independence (although their wages were typically sent to their
husbands or fathers).
Women Begin the Fight for Rights
In the early 1800s many women argued that their lack of rights made them almost the same as slaves. Women reformers began the women’s movement.
Women’s Movement – Movement working for greater rights and opportunities for
women of the early and middle 1800s.
Sarah Grimké argued that God made men and women equal and therefore men and women should be treated equally. Building on her sister’s ideas Angelina Grimké-Weld defended the rights of both
slaves and women on moral grounds.
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were two active reformers, supporting the temperance and abolitionist causes. Mott had helped found the Amercan Anti-Slavery Society.
Stanton was married to a leading abolitionist, Henry Stanton. Both Elizabeth and Henry were involved in women’s rights.
Seneca Falls Convention
In 1848, Mott and Stanton helped organize the
nation’s first Women’s Rights Convention in
Seneca Falls, NY. Marked the beginnings
of the women’s movement in the U.S.
The convention resulted in few concrete improvements in rights, but it inspired generations of young women. Susan B. Anthony was one of the leaders at the convention, who was firmly committed to women’s suffrage.
In 1848, the state of NY passed a law, the Married Women’s Property Act, guaranteeing many property rights for women.
Birth of the Women’s Rights Movement
-----------------------
The
Mormons
The
Unitarians
New Harmony
Brook Farm
The Shakers sMovement
|Religion in the Early 1800s |
|Second Great Awakening |Discrimination |Other Religious Movements |
|Camp Meetings |Mormons persecuted by Protestants |Utopian communities try to create perfect societies. |
|African Americans form their own churches. |Catholics face discrimination. |Shaker communities prosper. |
| |Poor Irish Catholics seen as a threat. |Transcendentalists promote new beliefs. |
| |Jewish people banned from public office. | |
| |People debate the roles of churches and state. | |
[pic]
[pic]
Q: Is the cartoonist in favor for the temperance movement or against? Why? (Hint: Read the caption)
A: The cartoonist is in favor of temperance. He blames cholera, fevers, murder, epilepsy on alcohol.
You Decide: How are southerners going to react after Nat Turner’s revolt?
Southern slave owners are going to want stricter laws/restrictions for their slaves.
Effects
1. Reformers published pamphlets and books.
2. Growing support.
3. Married Women’s Property Act in NY.
Events
1. Birth of women’s rights movement.
2. Women go to work.
3. Seneca Falls Convention.
Causes
1. Limited Rights.
2. Limited education opportunities.
3. Changing Attitudes.
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