The Age of Reform 1820-1850
I know of no country, indeed where the love of money has taken stronger hold of the affections of man than in the United States.
Still, man had it in his power to change because he was endowed with an infinite faculty for improvement.”
Alex deTocqueville
Chapter #13 - The Age of Jackson -The Jacksonian CUSP
Chapter #14 - The Northern World View -The MarketRevolution- i TRIP
Chapter #16 - The Southern World View - Plantation Agriculture -The Power of 50
Chapter #15 - Religion and Reform - Impact of the Second Great Awakening
Ralph Waldo Emerson "Man the Reformer"
What is man born for? What is man born for but to be a reformer? Isn’t man a re-maker of what he has made, a renouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good, imitating that great Nature?
Let him renounce everything which is not true to him, and put all his practices back on their first thoughts, and do nothing for which he has not the whole world for his reason.
Foundations of Antebellum Reform
RELIGION IN AMERICA TIMELINE
Many Americansexperienced uncertainty and anxietyas they confronted a rapidly changing society that saw the rise of the Market Revolution and the increase of urbanization and immigration. The Second Great Awakening address these feelings.
HOW? The movement preachedspiritual rebirth, individual self improvement and perfectionism. Its emphasis on the ability of individuals to amend their lives engendered a wide variety of reform movements - not only as a means of personal but as a mandate for reform and control of the larger society
Liberalism in religion started in 1800 spawned the2nd Great Awakeninga tidal wave of spiritual fervor that resulted in prison reform, church reform, temperance movement (no alcohol), women’s rights movement, abolition of slavery in 1830's. [Summary of Antebellum Reform]
The Temperance Movement
Demon Rum, Devils Juice
The Drunkard’s Progress
Maine Law (1851) Neal S. Dow
Consumption of Alcohol declines by 50% in the 1830’s
Strongly Anti-Immigrant (Targeting both Catholics and Germans)
The Women’s Movement
PHASE I
The first phase of women’s reform activities reflected women’s unique qualities, for example the“republican mother”
"Pre-Revolutionary ministers, particularly in Puritan Massachusetts, preached the moral superiority of men. Enlightened thinkers rejected this and knew that a republic could only succeed if its citizens were virtuous and educated."
PHASE II
The second phase challenged male prerogatives and moved beyondmoral suasion. As women become more involved in reform movements (especially temperance and abolition) some women increasing resented and began to defy the cult of domesticity.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Seneca Falls Convention (1848) Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions
Abolition of Slavery-Many forgotten people, but the most noble cause of the 19th Century
Harriet Tubman(bornAraminta Rossc.1822[– March 10, 1913) was anAfrican-Americanabolitionist,humanitarian, and, during theAmerican Civil War, aUnionspy. Born intoslavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved family and friends,[using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as theUnderground Railroad. She later helped abolitionistJohn Brownrecruit men forhis raidonHarpers Ferry, and in the post-war era was an active participant in the struggle forwomen's suffrage.
Born a slave inDorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate slave owner threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave and hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells ofhypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. She was a devoutChristianand experienced strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God.
In 1849, Tubman escaped toPhiladelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". Her actions made slave owners anxious and angry, and they posted rewards for her capture. When a far-reaching United StatesFugitive Slave Lawwas passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives further north intoCanada, and helped newly freed slaves find work.
When the US Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided theraid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than seven hundred slaves. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 inAuburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in thewomen's suffragemovement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African-Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. After she died in 1913, she became an icon of American courage and freedom.
The Jacksonian period (1824-1845) has been celebrated as the era of the “common man".To what degree didchanges inelectoral politics,theSecond Great Awakening, andWestward expansioninfluence the development of democracy between 1820 and 1840?
The Transcendentalists saw beauty in nature, but ugliness in a materialistic society full of greed and avarice(excessive orinsatiabledesire for wealth or gain)
Transcendentalists
“ sink god and nature in man”
Writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau questioned the doctrines of established churches and capitalistic habits of the merchant class.
They argued for a mystical and intuitive way of thinking as a means of discovering one’s inner self looking for the essence of God in nature. They could “transcend” experience and reason though their intuitive powers to discover universal truth.
The Transcendentalists saw beauty in nature, but ugliness in a materialistic society full of greed and avarice (excessive or insatiable desire for wealth or gain)
This Group of free thinkers from New England believed that man is not only good, but divine.
The old Puritan notion about man’s sinfulness was replaced by a belief in his divinity.
They saw beauty in nature, but ugliness in a society full of greed and avarice. At first they meet at George Ripley’s home in Boston to discuss their beliefs and ideas, then a few of them founded Brook Farm where they could live together and put their ideas into practice.
Writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau questioned the doctrines of established churches and capitalistic habits of the merchant class.
The Transcendentalists saw beauty in nature, but ugliness in a materialistic society full of greed and avarice (excessive or insatiable desire for wealth or gain)
Image Analysis:Lake Lucerne,1858
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
“Spiritual matters over material matters”
Stressed the importance of individual inspiration, self-reliance, dissent, and nonconformity?Emerson evoked a nationalistic spirit of Americans by urging them not to imitate European Culture but to create an entirely new and original American culture
In August of 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered "The American Scholar" to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard College, chastising his audience for their intellectual dependency on British and European writers.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Thoreau conducted a two-year experiment of living by himself in the woods outside of Concord Mass. He used his observations of nature to discover essential truths about life and the universe. He published Walden in 1854.
His essay on Civil Disobedience established him as an early advocate of non-violent protest. He refused to pay a tax that was designed to fund the immoral War with Mexico (1846-1848). He was forced to spend a night in jail
(1841
George Ripley 1802-1880
The Brook Farm (1841) George Ripley launched a communal living experiment at Brook Farm in Massachusetts.
“union between intellectual and manual labor”
GOAL – achieve a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor
RESULTSNever grew beyond 150 members. A bad fire and heavy debts ended the experiment in 1849
Utopian communities strove to escape the competitiveness of American life,regulate moral behavior, and create co-operative lifestyles.
Oneida Community
John Humphrey Noyes started a communal experiment in 1848. Dedicated to an ideal of perfect social and economic equality, members of the community shared property – and even partners.Critics attacked the free love and partner sharing aspect of the community, but they still prospered economically by producing highquality silverware
Religious "Come Outers"
The Second Great Awakening preachedspiritual rebirth, individual self improvement and perfectionism. Its emphasis on the ability of individuals to amend their lives engendered a wide variety of reform movements - not only as a means of personal but as a mandate for reform and control of the larger society
The Shakers
Shakersgrew to about 6,000 members in various communities by the 1840’s Held property in common and kept men and women strictly separate
Shakers today are mostly known for their celibate and communal lifestyle, pacifism, and their model ofequality of the sexes, which they institutionalized in their society in the 1780s. They are also known for their simple living, architecture and furniture.
The Mormans
Mormons– The Church of Later Day Saints founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. Smith gathered a following in Palmyra NY and eventually migrated to Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and eventually Utah.
The smoldering spiritual embers of theBurned-Over Districtkindled Joseph Smith, a rugged visionary, who reported that he had received some golden plates from an angel.
The cooperative Mormon sect rasped rank-and-file Americans, who were individualistic and dedicated to free enterprise; the Mormons aroused further antagonism by voting as a unit and by openly but understandably drilling their militia for defensive purposes.