Chapter 12 Author Videos

Revivalism in the Frontier

An emotional, fervent religious tradition embraced by Americans living in the frontiers during the early 19th century.

Romanticism

A movement originating in Europe where people found inspiration in the beauties of nature, viewing it as God's handwork.

New England Transcendentalists

A part of the romantic movement determined to create a flowering of American culture in arts, literature, and music.

Themes of 19th Century American History

Fervent religious revivalism and the cultivation of individual talent and perfectionism through romanticism and transcendentalism.

The Second Great Awakening

A religious movement in the 19th century allowing common people to participate more actively in religious life.

Denominations of the Second Great Awakening

Baptists and Methodists who were more open to non-seminary ministers, women, and African Americans.

Free Will Christianity

The Second Great Awakening concept emphasizing that salvation is an individual's choice rather than dependent on a minister.

Early 19th-Century Social Reform

An outpouring of public energy directed at helping the poor, prisoners, and those with mental disabilities, motivated by the Second Great Awakening.

Transcendentalism

Cultural radicalism in New England stressing the need to perfect American society through reform, idealism, and activism.

Motivations for the Reform Impulse

Religious, perfectionist, idealistic, and moralistic drivers behind 19th-century social movements.

Role of Women in Reform

Women became a crucial source of energy for reform movements, aided by middle-class prosperity allowing time outside the household.

The Cult of Domesticity

A devotion to limiting the role of women to Home, Hearth, and Church, focusing on marriage, motherhood, and religion.

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

A convention where women activists issued a Declaration of Independence to free themselves from the Cult of Domesticity and exercise equal rights.

Immediatists / Abolitionists

Anti-slavery activists who demanded an immediate end to slavery.

Tactics of the Anti-Slavery Movement

Propaganda (pamphlets, newspapers, rallies) and the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad

A series of halfway houses that enabled escaped slaves to move safely to the North.

Unitarian Denomination

A 'rational religion' emerging after the American Revolution that favored an inquisitive approach over accepting every word of the Bible as literal fact.

Mormon Faith

A new religious movement that emerged during the first half of the 19th century.

Key Transcendentalist Figures

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, the Peabody sisters, and Margaret Fuller.