The Ferment of Reform and Culture 1790-1860. Religion in America Most Americans attended church on a regular basis, but the fervor of the colonial era.

The Ferment of Reform and Culture

1790-1860

Religion in America

• Most Americans attended church on a regular basis, but the fervor of the colonial era had waned.

• 1794 -- Thomas Paine publishes The Age of Reason attacking the institution of the church.

• Many people became believers in Deism -- Franklin and Jefferson.

• Deists relied on reason over faith.

Unitarianism• Belief in God as one

person -- not the trinity.• Stressed the essential

goodness of human beings.

• Embraced by intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Second Great Awakening

• 1800 - Second Great Awakening begins as a backlash against the liberalism of the Age of Reason.

• Led to an era of evangelism and reform.

• Methodists and Baptists led camp meetings and sent missionaries to the Indians and overseas.

1830’s

• Peter Cartwright - Methodist “circuit rider” preacher.

• Charles Grandison Finney conducts revivals in eastern cities.

The Burned-Over District

• 1830’s -- William Miller led the Adventists (Millerites) to believe the second coming was to happen on Oct. 22, 1844.

• Southern and northern branches of the Methodist and Baptist churches broke apart over the issue of slavery.

1830 • Joseph Smith

founds Mormon church - claims to have been given golden plates by the Angel Moroni.

• The plates constituted the Book of Mormon and gave rise to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

• Mormons follow Smith west to Ohio, Missouri and finally Illinois.

• Locals persecuted the Mormons for cooperativism, voting as a unit, having their own militia and practicing polygamy.

•1844 -- Joseph Smith and his brother were killed by a mob in Carthage, Ill.

• 1846-47 -- Brigham Young led the Mormons to Salt Lake, Utah. 5000 had settled by 1848.

• 1850 -- Young becomes territorial governor

• 1859 -- “Mormon War” -- Federal troops force Mormons to submit to Federal authority.

Education

• Free tax-supported education slowly gained support at all levels of society.

• The Little Red Schoolhouse and the “3 R’s”

Winslow Homer

Horace Mann• led the crusade for better teachers, better schools and longer school years.

•Helped create “normal schools” -- teaching colleges to train teachers.

Noah Webster• “the Schoolmaster of the

Republic,” he improved textbooks and standardized an American dictionary.

William H. McGuffey• created the grade

school readers McGuffey’s Readers which taught grammar and moralism, patriotism and idealism.

Higher Education

• The Second Great Awakening led to the creation of many small, denominational liberal-arts colleges.

• Federal land grant colleges.

The University of Virginia

• founded and designed by Thomas Jefferson - founded as a non-religious institution dedicated to science and modern language.

Women’s education

• education for women was considered frivolous.

• Emma Willard established the Troy Female Seminary in 1821.

• Oberlin College -- admitted women in 1837 after already having admitted Blacks.

• Mary Lyon established Mount Holyoke Seminary in Mass.

The Lyceums• Travelling lecturers made

the circuit giving talks on science, literature and philosophy.

• Ralph Waldo Emerson

Magazines•The North American Review founded in 1815

•Godey’s Lady’s Book founded in 1830

An Age of Reform

• Reform movements included:

• women’s rights, communal living,

• Medical programs, polygamy, “free marriages”, celibacy.

•Anti- tobacco, anti-alcohol, and mail on Sundays.

• Women were very involved in abolitionism, women’s suffrage and other reforms.

Prison Reform

• The laboring class voted for an end to debtors prisons.

• The number of capital crimes was reduced and prisons were called to reform instead of just punish.

Dorothea Dix• traveled 60,000

miles chronicling the abuses against the mentally ill.

• Dix petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature to improve conditions.

The American Peace Society

• Anti-war group led by William Ladd called for an end to war.

Temperance Movement• Custom

and a hard life led to widespread alcohol abuse.

• The American Temperance Society was formed in 1826.

• T.S. Arthur wrote the novel Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There.

• Neal S. Dow sponsored the Maine Law of 1851 which prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol.

Women’s Rights

• Lucretia Mott,

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton,

• and Susan B. Anthony.

• Advocated women’s suffrage.

• Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was the first female graduate of a medical college.

• Margaret Fuller edited The Dial.

• The Grimke sister spoke against slavery.

• Lucy Stone kept her maiden name after she was married.

• Amelia Bloomer wore a short skirt with “Turkish” trousers.

Seneca Falls (1848)

• Women’s Rights convention at which Stanton read the “Declaration of Sentiments”

• Women’s rights became eclipsed by Abolition and the Civil War.

Utopianism

• more than 40 communes were created during the period.

Robert Owen• 1825 -

established New Harmony, IN. attracted scholars and scoundrels.

New Harmony

Brook Farm• was a successful attempt at

communal living until fire destroyed the experiment.

Oneida Colony• Founded in

NY in 1848, experimented in “complex marriages” and eugenics.

• They made and sold steel traps and silverware.

• After troubles with the law the group embraced monogamy and abandoned communism.

Scientific Achievement

• Practical science• Nathaniel Bowditch and

Matthew Maury in Navigation and Oceanography

• Benjamin Silliman - biology and geology professor at Yale.

• Louis Aggasiz - biology professor at Harvard.

• Asa Gray - Botany at Harvard

• were supporters of Charles Darwin.

• John J. Audubon - painted birds in the wild.-- “Birds of America”

Audubon’s Audubon’s BirdsBirds

• Medicine was slow to catch up to scientific achievement

The Arts

• Architecture - Thomas Jefferson

• Painters - Gilbert Stuart, Charles Wilson Peale, John Trumbull.

John Singleton Copley

Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart’s

Washington

Charles Wilson Peale

John Trumbull

Music• Minstrels in “blackface”

sang “darky tunes”

• Stephen Foster - “Old Folks at Home”

Literature• essays - The Federalist,

Common Sense.

• Ben Franklin's - Autobiography

The Knickerbocker Group

• Washington Irving - Rip Van Winkle.

• James Fenimore Cooper - the first American novelist.

• William Cullen Bryant - poet (“Thanatopsis”) and editor of the New York Evening Post.

Transcendentalism

• believed that people have an inner light that allows direct contact with God.

• They emphasized individualism and self reliance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

• famous address to Phi Beta Kappa “The American Scholar”

Ralph Waldo

Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

• Walden: Or Life in the Woods

• Civil Disobedience

Walt Walt WhitmanWhitman The Poet Laureate of

Democracy

• Leaves of Grass

Literary Lights.

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• John Greenleaf Whittier

• James Russell Lowell

• Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes

• William Gilmore Simms

• Edgar Allan Poe

• Herman Melville

Daily Diversions

• Stage plays: Uncle Tom’s Cabin ; Ten Nights in a Barroom.

• Famous Actors: Edwin Forrest, Junius Brutus Booth - (sons = Edwin Booth and John W. Booth)

Sports and Shows

• Horse racing; baseball;

• Showboats; Circuses

• Phineas T. Barnum “a sucker is born every minute”

Taking the waters

• upper class crowd “summered” at resorts like Saratoga Springs and Newport, RI.

• Rich often made the “Grand Tour” of Europe.