The Second Great Awakening, liberal social ideas from abroad, and Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility fostered the rise of voluntary organizations to promote religious and secular reforms, including abolition and women's rights.
Various groups of American Indians, women, and religious followers developed cultures reflecting their interests and experiences, as did regional groups and an emerging urban middle class.
New Ideas: Liberalism in Religion
DEISM
Less revelation, more reliance on reason
Less Bible, more science
But they believe in God
Gave human beings capacity for moral behavior
UNITARIANISM
Spinoff from less extreme Puritanism of the past
Humans have freewill and the possibility of salvation by good works
God not as stern Creator, but loving father
Contrast with hellfire doctrines of Calvinism
Rejecting Predestination and human wickedness
Second Great Awakening
Reasons:
Concern over lack of religious zeal
Ideas of Deism and Unitarianism
Wave of revivals spread across the country
Frontier "camp meetings"
Charles Finney- revival preacher who leads revivals in New York area in 1830s
Against slavery and alcohol
Numerous citizens converted
"Born again Christians"
Boosted church attendance
New religious sects formed
Methodists and Baptists huge increase in numbers
Stressed personal conversion (not predestination)
Democratic control of church affairs
Emotionalism in worship
Increase in evangelicalism inspire reform efforts - Age of Reform
Prison Reform
Temperance
Wonem’s movement
Anti-slavery
Key part of Second Great Awakening was the key role of women in religion
Majority of new church members
Women role of bringing family back to God
Inspired involvement in various other reform efforts
Mormons
Joseph Smith- Creates Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Travels to llinois
Murdered in 1844
BrighamYoung leads the followers to Utah in 1846-47
Develops a separate community ("New Zion")
Prosperous cooperative frontier community
Settlement increases by birthrate and immigrants from abroad (Missionary)
Will not be admitted into the union until 1896
issue of polygamy (controversial topic)
Dorothy Dix
Dorothy Dix - worked tirelessly to reform mental health treatment
Traveled the country to document the problem
Leads to professional treatment for the mentally ill ix
Education Reform
Tax supported schools were rare in early years of the republic
Benefits of Public Education
Instill republican values
Instill values: discipline, hard work, etc.
Americanize immigrants
HoraceMann- Secretary of Mass. Board of Education
Longer school terms
Compulsory attendance
Expanded curriculum
More schools
North benefitted far more from education reforms
Illegal for black slaves to learn to read and write
Temperance Movement
Drinking problems
Factory system needed efficient labor
Family life
Seen as immigrant issue (Irish and Germany drinking)
American Temperance Society created in 1826
Urged members to stop drinking
Created propaganda to spread their “dry” message
- Move from temperance to legal prohibition
- Maine law of 1851
Prohibited the manufacturer and sale of liquor
Nationwide with 18th amendment
Women Resist
Women were treated like second class citizens
Democratization did not apply to women
“Age of the Common Man”
"Cult of domesticity” the home was a woman's special sphere
Idea of "republican motherhood"
Mothers should raise children to be good citizens
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Women Reformers:
Inspired by Second Great Awakening
Demand rights for women, temperance movement, and the abolition of slavery
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton both advocated for suffrage for women
Women's Rights: Seneca Falls Convention (1848)
Stanton read "Declaration of Sentiments"
All men and women are created equal"
Demand right to vote for women
Launched the modern women's rights movement
[[Women’s rights was overshadowed by abolitionist movement[[
Transcendentalism
Truth, "transcends" the senses
Not just found by observation alone
Every person possess an inner light that can illuminate the highest truth
Ralph Waldo Emerson- stress self reliance, self improvement, and freedom.
“The American Scholar" in 1837 at Harvard challenged Americans to make their own art and culture
Henry David Thoreau- "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (1849) & “Walden" (1854)
Utopian Communities
Various movements to move away from conventional society and create a utopian community.
Mormons: religious communal effort
BrookFarm: communal transcendentalist experiment in Mass.
Secular, humanistic
NewHarmony: create a socialist type community that would be an answer to the problems presented by industrialization.