SOCIETY, CULTURE AND REFORM Unit 4 Ch.11 1820-1860 Antebellum period.

SOCIETY, CULTURE AND REFORM

Unit 4 Ch.11 1820-1860

Antebellum period

THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

• Revivalism in New York

• 1823-Charles G. Finney appealed to emotions and fear of damnation

• All can be saved through faith and hard work

• Baptists and Methodists

• South-preachers would travel from town to town and hold outdoor revival meetings

• By 1850; largest Protestant denominations in U.S.

THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

• Millennialism

• Belief that world was about to end

• William Miller set the date as Oct. 21,1844

• Millerites would continue as Seventh-Day Adventist

• Mormons

• Founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith

• Persecution forced them to flee west

• When Smith was murdered, Brigham Young led the group to Utah

TRANSCENDENTALISTS• Beliefs

• Questioned church doctrine, capitalism, materialism, and the general pursuit of wealth

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

• urged self-reliance, independent thinking, primacy of the spiritual over the material; anti-slavery

• Henry David Thoreau

• Advocate of non-violent protest

• Walden- book about observing nature to discover truths about life and the universe.

• Brook Farm

• 1841- George Ripley created the farm as an experiment in transcendental living

• It attracted many of New England’s elite

COMMUNAL EXPERIMENTS• Shakers

• Common property; forbid marriage and sexual relations

• New Harmony

• Secular experiment of Robert Owen

• Hoped to create a utopia to solve the problems of industrial society

• Oneida Community

• John Humphrey Noyes; dedicated to perfect social and economic equality

• Fourier Phalanxes

• French socialist Charles Fourier advocated that people share work and living arrangements

ARTS AND LITERATURE

• Painting

• Portrayed the lives of everyday people

• The Hudson River school emphasized nature

• Architecture

• Neoclassical: reflected ancient Greece with columned facades

• Literature

• Nationalistic though questioned intolerance and conformity; glorified frontier life

• James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville

BOATMEN ON THE

MISSOURIGeorge Caleb Bingham

EVENING IN ARCADIA

Thomas Cole

THE HORSE DEALERSWilliam S. Mount

SUNSETFrederick Church

TEMPERANCE• American Temperance Society (1826)

• Founded by Protestant ministers and other concerned with high rates of alcohol consumption

• Washingtonians (1840)

• Argued that alcoholism was a disease

• German and Irish immigrants opposed temperance

• Factory owners and politicians supported temperance because it could reduce crime and make workers more productive

PUBLIC ASYLUMS• 1820s and 1830s saw an increasing number of

criminals, emotionally disturbed persons, and paupers

• Mental hospitals

• Dorthea Dix

• Mentally ill began receiving professional treatment

• Schools for blind and deaf

• Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe

• Thomas Gallaudet

• Prisons

• Experimented with solitary confinement to reflect on sins

• Structure and discipline to bring about moral reform

PUBLIC EDUCATION

• Free common schools

• Motivated by fears of uneducated poor

• Horace Mann worked for improved schools, compulsory attendance, a longer school year, and increased teacher preparation

• Moral education

• William Holmes McGuffrey created elementary textbooks that extolled the virtues of hard work, punctuality, and sobriety

• Catholic schools founded in response to the “Protestant” education

• Higher education

• Small Protestant colleges were founded and some began to admit women

CHANGING FAMILY

• City life changed the roles of men and women, especially among the middle class

• Cult of domesticity

• Idealized view of women as moral leaders in the home and educators of children

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

• Origins of movement

• Relegated to secondary roles in abolition movement and prohibited from speaking at public conventions

• Seneca Falls Convention

• New York 1848

• Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

• Declaration of Sentiments about laws and customs that discriminate against women

• Stanton and Susan B. Anthony campaign for equal voting, legal, and property rights

ANTISLAVERY MOVEMENT• American Colonization Society (1817)

• Established a colony in Monrovia, Liberia for resettlement of former slaves

• American Antislavery Society (1831)

• William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator-advocated abolition by whatever means

• Liberty party

• Political party created to end slavery through political and legal means

• James Birney ran as presidential candidate in 1840 &1844

• Black abolitionists

• Frederick Douglass,;freedom through non-violence; The North Star

• Violent abolition

• Virgina slave Nat Turner led a rebellion of 50 men against 4 plantations

• 60 whites were killed- Turner was captured and killed

OTHER REFORMS

• American Peace Society

• Dietary reforms

• Clothing reforms

• Pseudoscience- phrenology

SOUTHERN REACTION TO REFORM

• Viewed reform as a conspiracy to destroy the Southern way of life