8.1 Complaint of a Lowell Factory Worker (1845)

Factory Worker Conditions

• The factory worker compares their conditions with those of enslaved people

  • They were not permitted to speak for themselves

  • They shall listen in silence, who speaks for the gains

  • Common sense will teach them “improving minds “ under different situations

Doubts on the Sincerity of Christian Beliefs of Factory Workers

• The factory worker doubts the sincerity of the Christian beliefs of the factory owner due to their poor working conditions

  • She felt that they were awed into silence by wealth and power and were under tyranny and cruel oppression

  • The owners talk benevolence in the parlor, compel their help to labor for a mean and paltry pittance in the kitchen

  • They manifest great concern for the souls of the heathen in the distant lands and care for nobody else besides their own

8.2 Joseph Smith, The Wentworth Letter (1842)

Limits to Religious Freedom During Pre-Civil War

• Mormons - emerged in 1830 after the discovery of The Book of Mormon. They were a religious community chased out from several states until they settled in Utah

• Religious freedom was limited and there was hostility towards the Mormons

• Mormons were chased out from New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois

• As the federal government focused its energies on fighting the Civil War, legal sanctions and political oppression of the Mormons virtually dissolved the church by 1887

• It wasn’t until the 1890s when the Mormons ended the practice of polygamy that Utah finally achieved statehood in 1896

Smith’s Claims that Offend Non-Mormon Americans

• He wished for a New Jerusalem, or Zion, to be built on the American continent

  • It implies that it would be a country governed by religious beliefs and as many were not Mormons, they disliked it

• He claimed that the Native Americans were descended from Israelites

  • It implies that the American expansion based on beliefs that they’re savages and beasts is fundamentally incorrect since the Natives were just as human as the colonists

8.3 A Woman in the Westward Movement (1824)

Effects of the Westward Movement on Social Expectations

• Women in the west had more freedom

  • They weren’t restricted to factory jobs and had more opportunities since the west lacked people to build, teach, and maintain property

  • Women in the North were tied to a factory system where they work required hard labor for 12 to 13 hours a day

• Women were able to prove that they can endure rough conditions

• The pioneers of the movement were left to be lonely and burdened

Noble on the Situations of the Frontier

• She was unable to rest well due to her worries of wild beasts harming her infants

• It was difficult to cook in the open air instead of in a log house

• Despite all, she does not regret moving to Michigan from New York

8.4 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar“ (1837)

Emmerson on American Writers and Artists

• Emmerson feels that American writers and artists are “cowed“ and need to develop more boldness and originality

• He wants to see freedom expressed more in the writings and artworks of American artists and authors

• Emmerson feels that artists and authors are too afraid to express themselves in society

• He believes that being bold and creative can exist together

Emmerson on Self-Reliance

• Emmerson believes that self-reliance is a man-made quality

• We are meant to rely on God, we were not designed to do things on our own

8.5 Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

Thoreau’s Famous Line

• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation

  • Thoreau believes that we attempt to fill the void with material things such as money, possession, and accolades.

  • We believe that material things are the path to happiness

  • However, he believes it is a misplaced value

• Thoreau, however, diminishes resignation

  • He believes that the old generation cannot guide the new

  • We lead quiet lives of desperation when we resign ourselves to dissatisfaction

  • Quiet desperation is acceptance of--and surrendering to--circumstances

  • Quiet desperate lives are frustrated, passive, and apathetic

  • They tend to be unfulfilling and unrealized

Thoreau: We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us

• Thoreau discusses where he feels the natural world needs the industrial, saying that we build the railroads to see our nation’s natural beauties but in doing so we destroy it

• He criticizes the effect of technology on society, complicating our lives further

• We experience this conundrum of either living empty, oversimplistic lives or building railroads that support transportation at the expense of destroying nature

• This is a very complex issue where we as a culture must walk a fine line and figure out exactly what and how much we really need compared to what we want.

8.6 Charles G. Finney, “Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts“ (1836)

Finney: A Change of Heart

• Finney is referring to changing religious beliefs

  • Someone’s change in spiritual beliefs results in a different end

  • When someone swaps from one religion to another, they start to praise the God they switch over to

  • Changing makes a person do different things which have different effects

Effect of Political Democracy on Finney’s Language

• Finney’s preachings would highly be judged as society at the time did not acknowledge religious freedom

• Democracy was dependent only on elected officials