Perusall Annotations Introduction

  • branches of the Second Great Awakening Christianity differed greatly in their beliefs and practices
    • Second Great Awakening: protestant religious revival in the US from about 1795-1835
  • most of them preached:
    • salvation was an individual choice
    • Millenarianism: the second coming of Christ was quickly coming
  • they argued that the US had a divine mission to prepare world for the second coming
    • this meant not just saving souls, but remaking the entire society
  • different groups of Americans would apply their religious beliefs to solve problems they saw in their country
    • they want to make the US as perfect as possible in comparison to other countries
    • these problems included, but weren’t limited to:
    • alcohol abuse
    • poverty
    • racial abuse
    • gender inequality
  • women took on leading roles in the social reform movements
    • they overturned the ideal of domesticity
    • domesticity: life at home taking care of your house and family
    • women were treated as if all women were good for was to cook, clean, and take care of the children at home (as if they had no other purpose)
  • women’s equality was made into its own reform movement
  • abolition was the most controversial and important reform cause
    • trying to end chattel slavery in the US
    • chattel slavery: enslaving and owning of human and their children as property that are able to be bought, sold, and forced to work without pay
    • Blacks and Whites united to try to convince society that slavery was sinful
    • some radical abolitionists used the Second Great Awakening to ideas and theories to inspire the violent overthrow of slavery