AP US History Chapter 10: Religion, Reform, and Culture

Individualism

Word coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 to describe Americans as people no longer bound by social attachments to classes, castes, associations, and families.

Second Great Awakening

A series of religious revivals starting in 1801, based on Methodism and Baptism.
- linked individual salvation to religious benevolence
- cooperation among denominations
- Finney's idea of free will attracted middle class (not poor bc they wanted better wages rather than religious salvation)

Benevolent Empire

A network of reform organizations whose goal was to restore the moral government of God by reducing vices of poverty
- targeted drunkenness, adultery, crime
- gov. banned public carnivals of drinking
- high alcohol consumption of the time meant the Protestants campaigned w/ revivalist methods

Maine Law

The nation's first state law for the prohibition of liquor manufacture and sales passed in 1851

Sabbatarianism

Reform movement that aimed to prevent business on Sundays (Christian Sabbath)

American Renaissance

A literary explosion during the 1840s inspired by Emerson's ideas on the liberation of the individual and Unitarian ministers from well-to-do New England families who questioned the constraints of their Puritan heritage

Romanticism

A European philosophy that rejected the ordered rationality of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, embracing human passion, spiritual quest and self knowledge; New conception of self and society

Lyceum Movement

- modeled off Aristotle's public forum
- arranged speaking tours by poets, preachers, scientists, and reformers
- important cultural institution in the North and Midwest (not South bc middle class smaller and popular education had lower priority)

Transcendentalist ideas

- humans are inherently good, but society and institutions corrupt the purity of the individual
- self-realization
- spirituality should come from self, not organized religion
- nature is beautiful and should be respected
- shake off inherited customs

Transcendentalism

A nineteenth-century movement in the Romantic tradition, which held that every individual can reach ultimate truths through spiritual intuition, which transcends reason and sensory experience.

Utopias

Communities founded by reformers and transcendentalists to help realize their spiritual and moral potential and to escape from the competition of modern industrial society.

Fourierist Socialism

A system of social and economic organization proposed by French thinker Charles Fourier which has based on common ownership of goods and shared labor by members of a community. A number of 19th century American utopian communities tried to put Fourierist principles into practice

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons)

Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. Most successful utopian movement.
- family, hard work, frugality, communal discipline
- goal was to restore primitive Christianity and moral perfection
- hostility towards group forced them to move to Nauvoo, Illinois
- justified polygamy led to downfall (multiple spouses)

The Bowery boys and Bowery gals

A group in Bowery, an entertainment strip in New York, which because of their ostentatious dress and behavior threatened the older New Yorkers.

Plural Marriage

The practice of men taking multiple wives which Mormon prophet Joseph Smith argued was biblically sanctioned and divinely ordained as a family system

Penny Papers

Sensational and popular urban newspapers that built large circulations by reporting crime and scandals.

Minstrel Shows

Popular theatrical entertainment begun in the 1830 in which featured white actors in blackface presented comic routines that combined racist caricature and social criticism; declared white supremacy

New York Herald

- most profitable: 1845
- largest circulation in US
- James Gordon Bennett

Edgar Allan Poe

dark stories led to creation of mystery genre

Urban Entertainment

rat/terrier fights, boxing, Bowery Theatre, abolitionist lecture, Barnum's museum of oddities

Free African Societies

Organizations in northern free black communities that sought to help community members and work against racial discriminations, inequality, and political slavery

Where did free blacks live?

Urban South and coastal cities like Mobile, Memphis, New Orleans,

Why did African Americans form the backbone of the urban artisan workforce?

skilled Europeans avoided the South

African Methodist Episcopal Church

Church founded in 1816 by African Americans who were discriminated against white Protestants. The church spread across the Northeast and Midwest and even founded a few congregations in the slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana and South Carolina

Abolitionism

The social reform movement to end slavery and the slave trade that began in the 1830s.

American Anti Slavery Society

The first interracial social justice movement in the united states which advocated the immediate unconditional end to slavery on the basis of human rights, without compensation to slave matters. Garrison and other abolitionists gained financial support from influential people.

Underground Railroad

An informal network of whites and free blacks in the South that assisted fugitive slaves to reach freedom in the North.

3 pronged attack by Abolitionists

- print million pamphlets
- Underground railroad to assist fugitives
- petition campaign w/ many signatures
- whites were alarmed (supported southern planters that supplied them w/ cotton)
- wealthy feared attack on all property rights
- Georgia offered $5k for Garrison tried/lynched

Gag Rule

A procedure in the House of Representatives from 1836 to 1844 by which antislavery petitions were automatically tabled when they were received so that they could not become the subject of debate.

Liberty Party

An antislavery political party that ran its first candidate in 1844, controversially challenging both the Democrats and Whigs; led by James Birney, wanted to use electoral action to end slavery

Domesticity

A middle class idea of separate spheres that celebrated women's special mission as homemakers, wives and mothers who exercised a Christian influence on their families and communities; it excluded women from professional careers, politics, and civic life

Female Moral Reform Society

An organization led by middle class Christian women who viewed prostitutes as victims of male lust sought to expose their male customers while rescuing sex workers and encouraging them to pursue respectable traders

Origins of the Women's Rights Movement

The parallels between the lack of power held by slaves and the lack of power held by women were hard to ignore.

Women's rights reformers began to publish their ideas in pamphlets and books.

The Grimké sisters also published their ideas on women's rights. In Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women, Sarah Grimké argued that God made men and women equal and that therefore men and women should be treated equally.

Married Women's Property Laws

Laws enacted between 1839 and 1860 in New York and other states that permitted married women to own, inherit, and bequeath property. (Mississippi, Maine, Massachusetts)

Seneca Falls Convention

The first national women's rights convention in the United States. It resulted in a manifesto extending to women the egalitarian republican ideology of the Declaration of Independence
- denounced coverture, higher education and property rights
- dismissed by public, but women gained right to institute lawsuits and testify

Rebecca Cox Jackson

a free Black woman, best known for her religious activism and for her autobiography

Charles Grandison Finney

An evangelist who was one of the greatest preachers of all time (spoke in New York City). He also made the "anxious bench" for sinners to pray and was was against slavery and alcohol.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American transcendentalist who was against slavery and stressed self-reliance, optimism, self-improvement, self-confidence, and freedom. He was a prime example of a transcendentalist and helped further the movement.
- resigned Boston pulpit, rejected organized religion, and wrote influential essays on the radically free person
- unitarian, pantheistic, nature-centered view of God
- Unitarians created Mount Auburn Cemetery
- declaration of literary independence to reject European influences, find inspo in everyday life

Henry David Thoreau

American transcendentalist who was against a government that supported slavery. He wrote down his beliefs in Walden. He started the movement of civil-disobedience when he refused to pay the toll-tax to support him Mexican War.
- lived alone in cabin after death of brother
- published Walden, or Life in the Woods-search for meaning beyond artificiality of society
- avoid unthinking conformity and peacefully resist laws

Margaret Fuller

Social reformer, leader in women's movement and a transcendentalist. Edited "The Dial" which was the publication of the transcendentalists. It appealed to people who wanted "perfect freedom" "progress in philosophy and theology and hope that the future will not always be as the past".
- Woman in the Nineteenth Century-endorsed idea all people could develop life-affirming mystical relationship with God
- called for equality in education and work

Walt Whitman

American poet and transcendentalist who was famous for his beliefs on nature, as demonstrated in his book, Leaves of Grass. He was therefore an important part for the buildup of American literature and breaking the traditional rhyme method in writing poetry.
- Leaves with Grass poems
- perfect communion with others
- America's collective democracy assumed a sacred character

Brook Farm

A transcendentalist Utopian experiment, put into practice by transcendentalist former Unitarian minister George Ripley at a farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, at that time nine miles from Boston. The community, in operation from 1841 to 1847, was inspired by the socialist concepts of Charles Fourier. Fourierism was the belief that there could be a utopian society where people could share together to have a better lifestyle.
- failed, ending quest for social institutions

Hawthorne and Melville

They criticized transcendentalism and warned against excessive individualism causing egoism

Mother Ann Lee

Founder of the Shakers which attracted more women and men and allowed little contact between genders. She saw a vision of herself as a reincarnation of Christ and gained followers.
- sexual equality
- disdained sexual intercourse and adopted young children
- Shakers declined because Benevolent empire expanded public and private orphanages

Joseph Smith

Founded Mormonism in New York in 1830 with the guidance of an angel. 1843, Smith's announcement that God sanctioned polygamy split the Mormons and let to an uprising against Mormons in 1844; translated the Book of Mormon and died a martyr.

David Walker

He was a black abolitionist who called for the immediate emancipation of slaves. He wrote the "Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World." It called for a bloody end to white supremacy. He believed that the only way to end slavery was for slaves to physically revolt.

Nat Turner

Leader of a slave rebellion in 1831 in Virginia. Friends and Family killed 55 whites, many blacks killed by white militia after. Virginia law for gradual emancipation failed and they tightened slave codes. New "gag rule' outlawed any discussion of slavery in the House of Representatives

William Lloyd Garrison

1805-1879. Prominent American abolitionist, journalist and social reformer. Editor of radical abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator", and one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Angelina and Sarah Grimke

Daughters of a South Carolina slaveholder that were antislavery. Controversial because they spoke to audiences of both men and women at a time when it was thought indelicate to address male audiences.
- used Enlightenment principles to support equal rights

Dorothea Dix

A reformer and pioneer in the movement to treat the insane as mentally ill, beginning in the 1820's, she was responsible for improving conditions in jails, poorhouses and insane asylums throughout the U.S. and Canada. Her actions prompted states to improve prisons and public houses.

Emma Willard

Early supporter of women's education, in 1818. She published Plan for Improving Education, which became the basis for public education of women in New York. 1821, she opened her own girls' school, the Troy Female Seminary, designed to prepare women for college (Middlebury Female Seminary)

Horace Mann

Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education; "Father of the public school system"; a prominent proponent of public school reform, & set the standard for public schools throughout the nation; lengthened academic year; pro training & higher salaries to teachers

Susan B. Anthony

Quaker, social reformer who campaigned for womens rights, the temperance, and was an abolitionist, helped form the National Woman Suffrage Association with Stanton (elite New Yorker)
- gained NY law so women could control wages, own property, guardianship of children