American Yawp Chapter 10: Religion and Reform - Benish

Second Great Awakening

Women's rights, temperance movement, education, mental health, and new religion(includes Utopian communities)

Burned over District

Term created by Charles Finney, explained that the residents of this area had experienced so many revivals by different religious groups that that there were no more souls to awaken to the fire of spiritual conversion.

Charles G. Finney

An influential revivalist preacher who first coined the term "Burned-Over Districts. He put theological issues aside and evangelized by appealing to worshippers' hearts and emotions. He promoted a movement known as "perfectionism." Premised on the belief that truly redeemed Christians would be motivated to live free of sin and reflect the perfection of God himself, his wildly popular revivals encouraged his converted followers to join reform movements and create God's kingdom on earth. The idea of "disinterested benevolence" also turned many evangelicals toward reform. In New York from 1825-1835

Methodism

Religious movement founded by John Wesley (1703-1719). Methodism broke with the Anglican church in Great Britain and insisted on strict self-discipline and a "methodical" approach to religious study and observance.

Calvinism

Started by John Calvin and inspired by Martin Luther's teaching, this religion taught that man can not get into Heaven by fail alone. it was started in the early 1500s. Calvinists believed that all of humankind was marred by sin, and God predestined only some for salvation. These attitudes began to seem too pessimistic for many American Christians.

Lyman Beecher

A Presbyterian minister who preached to the young generation of America. He appealed to them by using less orthodoxed approach to Calvinism. He was the leader of the Temperance Movement. He preached from 1798 to 1832 in states like NY, MA, and CT

Joseph Smith

He was a self-proclaimed "prophet" religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter-Day Saints movement. He CLAIMED that God told him not to join nay of the churches because they were all wrong, and later found the place to create a church. He also wrote the book of Mormon in the 1830's and practiced polygamy. He sent missionaries to in the USA, UK, and Ireland to send out the Book of Mormon.

Shakers

This group was part of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming established in England circa 1750 and strictly enforced celibacy in their several communities scattered throughout New England and the upper Midwest.

John Humphrey Noyes

American preacher and utopian socialist who founded the Putney, Oneida, and Wallingford Communities (in New York) and is credited with coining the term "free love" introduced or "complex marriage".

Unitarianism

Included members like ralph Emerson, George Ripley, Theodore parker, etc. This group rejected key points in orthodoxed Protestant beliefs like the divinity of Christ. This group created the Transcendental Club in 1836. It was in New York during the 19th century

Transcendentalism

This group had no established creed, but was united by the belief in a higher spiritual power within each person that told he or she the truth and guided moral action. This prinicipal was referred to as Soul, Spirit, Mind, or Reason. Deeply influenced by British Romanticism and German idealism's celebration of individual artistic inspiration, personal spiritual experience, and aspects of human existence not easily explained by reason or logic. They established an enduring legacy precisely b/c they developed distinctly American ideas that emphasized individualism, optimism, oneness with nature, and a modern orientation toward the future rather than the past. Serval members also participated in communal living experiments.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A member of the Transcendental Club of 1836. espoused a religious worldview wherein God, "the eternal ONE," manifested through the special harmony between the individual soul and nature. In "The American Scholar" (1837) and "Self-Reliance" (1841), he emphasized the utter reliability and sufficiency of the individual soul, and exhorted his audience to overcome "our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands." He believed that the time had come for Americans to declare their intellectual independence from Europe.

Henry David Thoreau

A literary intellectual who was part of the Transcendental club. He believed in simple living, communion with nature, and self His strong individualism led to the yielding of "Resistance to Civil Government" (1849).

Brook Farm

Place where George Ripley and other members of the utopian community began to espouse Fourierism, a vision of society based upon cooperative principles, as an alternative to capitalist conditions. It was in the mid-1840s.

Benevolent societies

This group helped deal with the growing mass of urban Residents who did not attend church and didn't have access to Scripture. Led by ministers and dominated by middle-class women, they printed and distributed Protestant tracts, taught Sunday school, distributed outdoor relief, and evangelized in both frontier towns and urban slums. They lent moral backing and manpower to large-scale social reform projects, including the temperance movement.

Frederick Douglass

Influencial writer. one of the most prominent african american figures in the abolitionist movement. escaped from slavery in maryland. he was a great thinker and speaker. published his own antislavery newspaper called the north star and wrote an autobiography that was published in 1845.

American Quakers

This group began to question slavery as early as the late-17th century, and worked with British reformers in the successful campaign that ended the slave trade, and then slavery itself, in the early nineteenth century. Members included Lucretia Mott and John Greenleaf Whittier helped push the idea of immediate emancipation onto the center stage of northern reform agendas. Inspired by a strategy known as "moral suasion," these young abolitionists believed they could convince slaveholders to voluntarily release their slaves by appealing to their sense of Christian conscience. The result would be national redemption and moral harmony.

Lucretia Mott

an American Quaker, abolitionist, a women's rights activist, and a social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongst the women excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. In 1848 the first meeting about women's rights. Mott helped write the Declaration of Sentiments during the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. She helped push the idea of immediate emancipation onto the center stage of northern reform agendas.

William Lloyd Garrison

A Baptist and prominent American abolitionists that was converted to the antislavery idea of immediatism—that is, the demand for emancipation without delay. He fought slavery in the 1820s by advocating for both black colonization and gradual abolition.Then, in 1833, he presided as reformers from ten states came together to create the American Antislavery Society that rested their emancipation of the Declaration of Independence.

Black notherners convinced Garrison that colonization was an inherently racist project and that African Americans possessed a right to liberty. So, in 1831, he established a newspaper called The Liberator, through which he organized and spearheaded an unprecedented interracial crusade dedicated to promoting immediate emancipation and Black citizenship.

General Antislavery Convention

This antislavery delegation in 1840 that consisted of more than 500 abolitionists, mostly coming from France, UK, and the US. All met together in England, united by their common goal of ending slavery in their time. Although abolitionism was not the largest American reform movement of the antebellum period (that honor belongs to temperance), it did foster greater cooperation among reformers in England and the United States. It is here that Moot and Stanton created the idea of the Seneca Fall Convention

Cane Ridge Revival

A religious revival and a part of the second Great Awakening took place in Cane Ridge, KY, in the summer of 1801. A group of Evangelical ministers presided over the nations first "camp meeting". An extraordinary revival that lasted several days and impressed everyone involved. It was the beginning of the church trying to "harvest" new members.

Benevolent Empire

A broad-ranging campaign of moral and institutional reforms inspired by evangelical Christian ideals and endorsed by upper-middle-class men and women in the 1820s and 1830s.

Campaign of moral and institutional reforms inspired by Christian ideals and endorsed my upper middle class in the 1820s. Ministers insisted people who experienced saving grace should provide moral guidance and charity to the less fortunate.

Temperance Movement

A social movement against the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Many reformers saw intemperance as the biggest impediment to maintaining order and morality in the young republic. Temperance reformers saw a direct correlation between alcohol and other forms of vice and, most importantly, felt that it endangered family life. In 1826, evangelical ministers organized the American Temperance Society to help spread the crusade nationally.

difficulties with benevolent empire

Difficulties arose, however, when the benevolent empire attempted to take up more explicitly political issues. The movement against Indian removal was the first major example of this. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was met with fierce opposition from within the affected Native American communities as well as from the benevolent empire. Jeremiah Evarts, one of the leaders of the American Board, wrote a series of essays under the pen name William Penn urging Americans to oppose removal.

This political shift was even more evident when American missionaries challenged Georgia state laws asserting sovereignty over Cherokee territory in the Supreme Court Case Worcester v. Georgia.24 Although the case was successful, the federal government did not enforce the Court's decision, and Indian removal was accomplished through the Trail of Tears, the tragic, forced removal of Native Americans to territories west of the Mississippi River.

Anti-removal activism

was also notable for the entry of ordinary American women into political discourse. The first major petition campaign by American women focused on opposition to removal and was led (anonymously) by Catharine Beecher.

Most god defying sin

The revivalist doctrines of salvation, perfectionism, and disinterested benevolence led many evangelical reformers to believe that slavery was the most God-defying of all sins and the most terrible blight on the moral virtue of the United States.

How abolitionists got the word out to encourage movements against slavery

abolitionists employed every method of outreach and agitation.

- At home in the North, abolitionists established hundreds of antislavery societies and worked with long-standing associations of Black activists to establish schools, churches, and voluntary associations.

- Women and men of all colors were encouraged to associate together in these spaces to combat what they termed "color phobia."

- Harnessing the potential of steam-powered printing and mass communication, abolitionists also blanketed the free states with pamphlets and antislavery newspapers.

- They blared their arguments from lyceum podiums and broadsides with shame-inducing exposés of northern complicity in the return of freedom-seeking fugitive enslaved people, and white reformers sentimentalized slave narratives that tugged at middle-class heartstrings.

- Abolitionists used the U.S. Postal Service in 1835 to inundate southern enslavers with calls to emancipate their enslaved laborers in order to save their souls, and, in 1836, they prepared thousands of petitions for Congress as part of the Great Petition Campaign.

Gag Rule

In Congress, Whigs and Democrats joined forces in 1836 to pass an unprecedented restriction on freedom of political expression known as the gag rule, prohibiting all discussion of abolitionist petitions in the House of Representatives.

Most Americans did not share the views of abolitionists so they attempted to silence them.

Liberty Party

political abolitionists formed the Liberty Party under the leadership of James G. Birney. This new abolitionist society was predicated on the belief that the U.S. Constitution was actually an antislavery document that could be used to abolish slavery through the national political system. (supported abolition, broke off Anti-slavery society)

moral suasion

A method of reformers attempting to convert people to their cause by highlighting the moral implications of the opposing viewpoint. Moral suasionists, led most prominently by William Lloyd Garrison, felt that the U.S. Constitution was a fundamentally pro-slavery document, and that the present political system was irredeemable. They dedicated their efforts exclusively toward persuading the public to redeem the nation by reestablishing it on antislavery grounds.

Became viewed as unrealistic and called for political action vs moral suasion.

womens rights

Many abolitionists who believed full-heartedly in moral suasion nonetheless felt compelled to leave the American Anti-Slavery Society because, in part, it elevated women to leadership positions and endorsed women's suffrage. Under the leadership of Arthur Tappan, they left to form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

Important for education and public engagement

The Seneca Falls Convention was the first of many such gatherings promoting women's rights, held almost exclusively in the northern states. grew slowly and experienced few victories. In Antebellum period NO states allowed women to vote.

Kansas (Fugitive Slave Act)

The model of resistance to the slave power only became more pronounced after 1850, when a long-standing Fugitive Slave Act was given new teeth. Though a legal mandate to return runaway enslaved people had existed in U.S. federal law since 1793, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 upped the ante by harshly penalizing officials who failed to arrest runaways and private citizens who tried to help them. This law, coupled with growing concern over the possibility that slavery would be allowed in Kansas when it was admitted as a state, made the 1850s a highly volatile and violent period of American antislavery.

Declaration of Sentiments

The Declaration of Sentiments outlined fifteen grievances and eleven resolutions. They championed property rights, access to the professions, and, most controversially, the right to vote. 68women and 32 men, all of whom were already involved in some aspect of reform, signed the Declaration of Sentiments (men AND WOMEN are equal)

Approximately 1 out of every 10 Kentuckian residents attended a week-long spiritual revival in 1801.

True

Early 19th century Protestant religions clashed over theological issues, but they agreed that America's social ills must be cured.

true

In antebellum America, married women employed legal wills to bequeath their property to offspring.

false

Many groups and individuals proposed ending slavery immediately—a movement called "immediatism"—rather than gradually. Which of the following groups was not a proponent of immediatism?

quaker, presbytarian, baptist?, (put congregational church and it was wrong)

Sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké traveled on a lecture circuit, speaking about women's rights and abolition.

true

To which of the following did the term "circuit riders" refer during the 1800's?

Circuit rider clergy, in the earliest years of the United States, were clergy assigned to travel around specific geographic territories to minister to settlers and organize congregations. Circuit riders were clergy in the Methodist Episcopal Church and related denominations, although similar itinerant preachers could be found in other faiths as well, particularly among minority faith groups.

Which of the following religious groups was NOT prominent during the Second Great Awakening?

catholic

Which of the following is FALSE about the early days of Mormonism and its leader?

leader had no religious training, moved a lot, settled in Utah (don't think it was popular in America & Europe?)

Approximately 1 out of every 10 Kentuckian residents attended a week-long spiritual revival in 1801.

true

Author and ordained Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson and poet-philosopher Henry David Thoreau were members of the Transcendental Club in 1836.

true

What was the name of the first steamboat to navigate the Mississippi River successfully?

The New Orleans

Nat Turner, an enslaved black man living in Southampton County, Virginia, led a rebellion in 1831. Which of the following was FALSE with respect to Nat Turner and his rebellion?

Led 50 slaves, slaughtered 57 (men?) women and children, self proclaimed prophet, was hung and others were returned to their enslavers (d-By the next day, the local militia and white residents had captured or killed all of the participants except Turner, who hid for a number of weeks in nearby woods before being captured and executed.)

In 1785 a company from Liverpool, England, was the first European entity to purchase Southern cotton.

true

Conflicts among Southern men were settled by various means. Which of the following is NOT a means whereby men settled their differences?

trial before a magistrate (they did fight, arbitration among friends)

As Native Americans were relocated westward, more land was now available in the South. Which of the following is FALSE with respect to this new land?

got rich overnight, banks offered lines of credit to anyone looking to buy land in the Southwest and engaged in speculation, (had to be one about railroads?)

With the democratization of land ownership through Indian removal, federal auctions, readily available credit, and the seemingly universal dream of cotton's immediate profit, one of the South's lasting traditions became normalized and engrained. And by the 1860s, that very tradition, seen as the backbone of southern society and culture, would split the nation in two. The heyday of American slavery had arrived.

Cotton was exceedingly profitable, but it could also be risky. Which of the following did NOT add to the Southern farmer's stress?

demand for cotton in Europe .

Planters expanded their lands, purchased enslaved laborers, extended lines of credit, and went into massive amounts of debt because they were constantly working against the next guy, the newcomer, the social mover, the speculator, the trader. A single bad crop could cost even the most wealthy planter his or her entire life, along with those of his or her enslaved laborers and their families. Although the cotton market was large and profitable, it was also fickle, risky, and cost intensive. The more wealth one gained, the more land one needed to procure, which led to more enslaved laborers, more credit, and more mouths to feed. Also had fear of rebellion and betrayl.

Southern cotton was so popular that various groups attempted to develop similar strains of cotton seed. Which of the following groups did NOT attempt to develop cotton?

Not Explorers

Land owners, botanists, merchants

Between 1830 and 1850, population growth in Southern cities exploded. Which of the following does NOT characterize Southern cities prior to 1830?

Cities certainly existed, but they served more as local ports than as regional, or national, commercial hubs. The city and the field, the urban center and the rural space, were inextricably linked in the decades before the Civil War. And that relationship connected the region to a global market and community. As southern cities grew, they became more cosmopolitan, attracting types of people either unsuited for or uninterested in rural life. These people—merchants, skilled laborers, traders, sellers of all kinds and colors—brought rural goods to a market desperate for raw materials.

(answer was probably one about railroads connecting cities - dont see anything about RR in Ch 11. Other one was about county seats being connected)

By 1835 the American South had become the world's leading producer of cotton.

true - By 1835, the five main cotton-growing states—South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana—produced more than five hundred million pounds of Petit Gulf for a global market stretching from New Orleans to New York and to London, Liverpool, Paris and beyond.

Why was Southern cotton in greater demand than cotton from other countries?

it was longer strand

The discovery of Gossypium barbadense—often called Petit Gulf cotton—near Rodney, Mississippi, in 1820 changed the American and global cotton markets forever.2 "Petit Gulf, it was said, slid through the cotton gin—a machine developed by Eli Whitney in 1794 for deseeding cotton—more easily than any other strain. It also grew tightly, producing more usable cotton than anyone had imagined to that point.

Manifest Destiny

the 19th-century doctrine or belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable.

First, many Americans believed that the strength of American values and institutions justified moral claims to hemispheric leadership.

Second, the lands on the North American continent west of the Mississippi River (and later into the Caribbean) were destined for American-led political and agricultural improvement.

Third, God and the Constitution ordained an irrepressible destiny to accomplish redemption and democratization throughout the world.

"Young America" movement

the confident, manifest destiny spirit of the Americans in the 1850's. Expansionists began to think about transmitting the dynamic, democratic spirit of the US to other countries by aiding revolutionaries, opening up new markets, and annexing foreign lands

many Americans, including Emerson, disapproved of aggressive expansion

true = opponents felt manifest destiny was nothing other than a kind of imperialism that the American Revolution was supposed to have repudiated. Many members of the Whig Party (and later the Republican Party) argued that the United States' mission was to lead by example, not by conquest.

where did americans settle after war of 1812

Americans settled the Great Lakes region rapidly thanks in part to aggressive land sales by the federal government

Western expansion in the US

Missouri's admission as a slave state presented the first major crisis over westward migration and American expansion in the antebellum period.

Farther north, lead and iron ore mining spurred development in Wisconsin.

By the 1830s and 1840s, increasing numbers of German and Scandinavian immigrants joined easterners in settling the Upper Mississippi watershed.

Little settlement occurred west of Missouri as migrants viewed the Great Plains as a barrier to farming.

Farther west, the Rocky Mountains loomed as undesirable to all but fur traders, and all Native Americans west of the Mississippi appeared too powerful to allow for white expansion.

Florida

strategic value for the young nation's growing economic and military interests in the Caribbean.

The most important factors that led to the annexation of Florida included anxieties over runaway enslaved people, Spanish neglect of the region, and the desired defeat of Native American tribes who controlled large portions of lucrative farm territory

After bitter conflict that often pitted Americans against a collection of Native Americans and formerly enslaved people, Spain eventually agreed to transfer the territory to the United States. The resulting Adams-Onís Treaty exchanged Florida for $5 million and other territorial concessions elsewhere

Second Seminole War

(1835-1842) Conflicts between Seminoles and the US. The Seminoles tried to retain their land in Florida. It was the most expensive Indian War fought by the United States.

Paternalism

President Jackson believed Indian Removal was acting in best interest of Native Americans - give Native Americans land in the West in exchange for their lands east of the Mississippi.

will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites . . . and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, to cast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community.

Cherokees in Georgia

Georgia grew impatient with the process of negotiation and abolished existing state agreements with the Cherokee that had guaranteed rights of movement and jurisdiction of tribal law. Andrew Jackson encouraged the Cherokee, among others, to voluntarily relocate to the West. The discovery of gold in Georgia in the fall of 1829 further antagonized the situation.

Treaty of Echota

Signed by only 500 Cherokee Indians who were bribed saying that all 17,000 Cherokee's must leave within 2 years to go to land in Louisiana Territory. IF not they would be forced to leave by the United States Army on the Trail of Tears.

Civilization Policy

the attempt of the US government to teach Indians how to be "civilized" by teaching them commercial agriculture, ranching, and proper gender roles

Thomas L. McKenney, superintendent of Indian trade served as the main architect of the civilization policy. He asserted that Native Americans were morally and intellectually equal to whites. He sought to establish a national Indian school system.

Congress rejected McKenney's plan but instead passed the Civilization Fund Act in 1819. This act offered $10,000 annually to be allocated toward societies that funded missionaries to establish schools among Native American tribes. However, providing schooling for Native Americans under the auspices of the civilization program also allowed the federal government to justify taking more land.

The Panic of 1819 was caused by

inflation and land speculation destabilizing the economy - people couldn't pay the loans they got from the national bank

Falling prices and depleted soil meant farmers were unable to make their loan payments.

Government responded with Smaller lots that made it easier for more farmers to clear land and begin farming faster

Texas

After gaining its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico hoped to attract new settlers to its northern areas to create a buffer between it and the powerful Comanche. New immigrants, mostly from the southern United States, poured into Mexican Texas.

Over the next twenty-five years, concerns over growing Anglo influence and possible American designs on the area produced great friction between Mexicans and the former Americans in the area.

In 1829, Mexico, hoping to quell both anger and immigration, outlawed slavery and required all new immigrants to convert to Catholicism.

American immigrants, eager to expand their agricultural fortunes, largely ignored these requirements.

In response, Mexican authorities closed their territory to any new immigration in 1830—a prohibition ignored by Americans who often squatted on public lands

Anglo settlers in Mexican Texas, or Texians as they called themselves, opposed Santa Anna's centralizing policies and met in November. They issued a statement of purpose that emphasized their commitment to the Constitution of 1824 and declared Texas to be a separate state within Mexico.

Texas-Mexico border

U.S. thought it should be at the Rio Grande while the Mexicans thought it should be at the Nueces River, 150 miles north. Neither claim was realistic since the sparsely populated area, known as the Nueces strip, was in fact controlled by Native Americans.

Polk preemptively sent a four-thousand-man army under General Zachary Taylor to Corpus Christi, Texas, just northeast of the Nueces River. Upon word of Slidell's rebuff in January 1846, Polk ordered Taylor to cross into the disputed territory.

Mr. Polk's War

the war with Mexico had mixed views throughout the Union. It was popular in the Mississippi Valley, but it was called Mr. Polk's War in the northeast. Whigs generally opposed the war, but party members in Congress voted to support the America soldiers and marines during the fighting. Abraham Lincoln believed Polk rushed the country into war over disputed territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. His views were not popular and he chose not to run for reelection as a Whig congressman.

Winfield Scott

United States general who was a hero of the War of 1812 and who defeated Santa Anna in the Mexican War (1786-1866)

Scott's men occupied Mexico's capital for over four months while the two countries negotiated. In the United States, the war had been controversial from the beginning. Embedded journalists sent back detailed reports from the front lines, and a divided press viciously debated the news. Volunteers found that war was not as they expected. Disease killed seven times as many American soldiers as combat.

Treaty of Gaudalupe Hidalgo

treaty that ended the mexican war and gave the U.S much of Mexico's northern territory (1848)

Effects of the Mexican-American War

(1) war was relatively small; 13,000 American lives lost mostly to disease

(2) American territory increased by about 1/3, larger than the LA purchase; stimulated the spirit of Manifest Destiny

(3) field experience for officers/generals who would fight in the Civil War

(4) Britain forced to acknowledge US military power; US and Mexico increased respect for eachother's armies

(5) ugly turning point in relations between US and Latin America; increasingly feared and condemned as a greedy and untrustworthy bully

(6) rearoused the slavery issue; abolitionists claimed the conflict to have been provoked by the "slavocracy" for its own purposes - pushed country closer to civil war

(7) elevated Zachary Taylor to president

Gold Rush

a period from 1848 to 1856 when thousands of people came to California (3 month trip) in order to search for gold.

San Francisco, whose population grew from about five hundred in 1848 to almost fifty thousand by 1853. Lawlessness, predictable failure of most fortune seekers, racial conflicts, and the slavery question all threatened manifest destiny's promises.

Native americans were greatest obstacle in americans moving west to fertile Oregon farmland

false - The slow progress, disease, human and oxen starvation, poor trails, terrible geographic preparations, lack of guidebooks, threatening wildlife, vagaries of weather, and general confusion were all more formidable and frequent than attacks from Native Americans. Despite the harshness of the journey, by 1848 approximately twenty thousand Americans were living west of the Rockies, with about three fourths of that number in Oregon.

Monroe Doctrine

an American foreign policy opposing interference in the Western hemisphere from outside powers

Filibustering

This is an attempt to obstruct a particular decision from being taken by using up the time available, typically through an extremely long speech. This would prevent the "opposing" party to pass an unfavorable law and ultimately force a compromise.

Filibustering took greatest hold in the imagination of Americans as they looked toward Cuba. Fears of racialized revolution in Cuba (as in Haiti and Florida before it) as well as the presence of an aggressive British abolitionist influence in the Caribbean energized the movement to annex Cuba and encouraged filibustering as expedient alternatives to lethargic official negotiations.

Other filibustering expeditions were launched elsewhere, including two by William Walker, a former American soldier. Walker seized portions of the Baja peninsula in Mexico and then later took power and established a slaving regime in Nicaragua.