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THE AMERICAN YAWP

10. Religion and Reform

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I. Introduction | II. Revival and Religious Change | III. Atlantic Origins of Reform | IV. The Benevolent Empire | V. Antislavery and Abo-

litionism | VI. Women’s Rights in Antebellum America | VII. Conclusion | VIII. Primary Sources | IX. Reference Material

“Camp Meeting of the Methodists in N. America,” 1819. Library of Congress

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I. Introduction

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The early nineteenth century was a period of immense change in the United States. Economic, political, demographic, and territorial

transformations radically altered how Americans thought about themselves, their communities, and the rapidly expanding nation. It

was a period of great optimism, with the possibilities of self-governance infusing everything from religion to politics. Yet it was also a pe-

riod of great con�ict, as the bene�ts of industrialization and democratization increasingly accrued along starkly uneven lines of gender,

race, and class. Westward expansion distanced urban dwellers from frontier settlers more than ever before, even as the technological in-

novations of industrialization—like the telegraph and railroads—o�ered exciting new ways to maintain communication. The spread of

democracy opened the franchise to nearly all white men, but urbanization and a dramatic in�ux of European migration increased social

tensions and class divides.

Americans looked on these changes with a mixture of enthusiasm and suspicion, wondering how the moral fabric of the new nation

would hold up to emerging social challenges. Increasingly, many turned to two powerful tools to help understand and manage the vari-

ous transformations: spiritual revivalism and social reform. Reacting to the rationalism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the

religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening reignited Protestant spirituality during the early nineteenth century. The revivals in-

corporated worshippers into an expansive religious community that crisscrossed all regions of the United States and armed them with a

potent evangelical mission. Many emerged from these religious revivals with a conviction that human society could be changed to look

more heavenly. They joined their spiritual networks to rapidly developing social reform networks that sought to alleviate social ills and

eradicate moral vice. Tackling numerous issues, including alcoholism, slavery, and the inequality of women, reformers worked tirelessly

to remake the world around them. While not all these initiatives were successful, the zeal of reform and the spiritual rejuvenation that

inspired it were key facets of antebellum life and society.

II. Revival and Religious Change

In the early nineteenth century, a succession of religious revivals collectively known as the Second Great Awakening remade the nation’s

religious landscape. Revivalist preachers traveled on horseback, sharing the message of spiritual and moral renewal to as many as possi-

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ble. Residents of urban centers, rural farmlands, and frontier territories alike �ocked to religious revivals and camp meetings, where in-

tense physical and emotional enthusiasm accompanied evangelical conversion.

The Second Great Awakening emerged in response to powerful intellectual and social currents. Camp meetings captured the democra-

tizing spirit of the American Revolution, but revivals also provided a unifying moral order and new sense of spiritual community for

Americans struggling with the great changes of the day. The market revolution, western expansion, and European immigration all chal-

lenged traditional bonds of authority, and evangelicalism promised equal measures of excitement and order. Revivals spread like wild�re

throughout the United States, swelling church membership, spawning new Christian denominations, and inspiring social reform.

One of the earliest and largest revivals of the Second Great Awakening occurred in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, over a one-week period in

August 1801. The Cane Ridge Revival drew thousands of people, and possibly as many as one of every ten residents of Kentucky.

Though large crowds had previously gathered annually in rural areas each late summer or fall to receive communion, this assembly was

very di�erent. Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian preachers all delivered passionate sermons, exhorting the crowds to strive for their

own salvation. They preached from inside buildings, evangelized outdoors under the open sky, and even used tree stumps as makeshift

pulpits, all to reach their enthusiastic audiences in any way possible. Women, too, exhorted, in a striking break with common practice.

Attendees, moved by the preachers’ fervor, responded by crying, jumping, speaking in tongues, or even fainting.

Events like the Cane Ridge Revival did spark signi�cant changes in Americans’ religious a�liations. Many revivalists abandoned the

comparatively formal style of worship observed in the well-established Congregationalist and Episcopalian churches and instead em-

braced more impassioned forms of worship that included the spontaneous jumping, shouting, and gesturing found in new and alterna-

tive denominations. The ranks of Christian denominations such as the Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians swelled precipitously

alongside new denominations such as the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The evangelical �re reached such heights, in fact, that one

swath of western and central New York state came to be known as the Burned-Over District. Charles Grandison Finney, the in�uential

revivalist preacher who �rst coined the term, explained that the residents of this area had experienced so many revivals by di�erent reli-

gious groups that that there were no more souls to awaken to the �re of spiritual conversion.

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Removing the government support of churches created what historians call the American spiritual marketplace. Methodism achieved

the most remarkable success, enjoying the most signi�cant denominational increase in American history. By 1850, Methodism was by

far the most popular American denomination. The Methodist denomination grew from fewer than one thousand members at the end

of the eighteenth century to constitute 34 percent of all American church membership by the midnineteenth century. After its leaders

broke with the Church of England to form a new American denomination in 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) achieved

its growth through innovation. Methodists used itinerant preachers, known as circuit riders. These men (and the occasional woman)

won converts by pushing west with the expanding United States over the Alleghenies and into the Ohio River Valley, bringing religion

to new settlers hungry to have their spiritual needs attended. Circuit riding took preachers into homes, meetinghouses, and churches, all

mapped out at regular intervals that collectively took about two weeks to complete.

Revolutionary ideals also informed a substantial theological critique of orthodox Calvinism that had far-reaching consequences for reli-

gious individuals and for society as a whole. Calvinists believed that all of humankind was marred by sin, and God predestined only

some for salvation. These attitudes began to seem too pessimistic for many American Christians. Worshippers increasingly began to take

responsibility for their own spiritual fates by embracing theologies that emphasized human action in e�ecting salvation, and revivalist

preachers were quick to recognize the importance of these cultural shifts. Radical revivalist preachers, such as Charles Grandison

Finney, put theological issues aside and evangelized by appealing to worshippers’ hearts and emotions. Even more conservative spiritual

leaders, such as Lyman Beecher of the Congregational Church, appealed to younger generations of Americans by adopting a less ortho-

dox approach to Calvinist doctrine. Though these men did not see eye to eye, they both contributed to the emerging consensus that all

souls are equal in salvation and that all people can be saved by surrendering to God. This idea of spiritual egalitarianism was one of the

most important transformations to emerge out of the Second Great Awakening.

Spiritual egalitarianism dovetailed neatly with an increasingly democratic United States. In the process of winning independence from

Britain, the revolution weakened the power of long-standing social hierarchies and the codes of conduct that went along with them. The

democratizing ethos opened the door for a more egalitarian approach to spiritual leadership. Whereas preachers of long-standing de-

nominations like the Congregationalists were required to have a divinity degree and at least some theological training in order to become

spiritual leaders, many alternative denominations only required a conversion experience and a supernatural “call to preach.” This meant,

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for example, that a twenty-year-old man could go from working in a mill to being a full-time circuit-riding preacher for the Methodists

practically overnight. Indeed, their emphasis on spiritual egalitarianism over formal training enabled Methodists to outpace spiritual

competition during this period. Methodists attracted more new preachers to send into the �eld, and the lack of formal training meant

that individual preachers could be paid signi�cantly less than a Congregationalist preacher with a divinity degree.

In addition to the divisions between evangelical and nonevangelical denominations wrought by the Second Great Awakening, the re-

vivals and subsequent evangelical growth also revealed strains within the Methodist and Baptist churches. Each witnessed several

schisms during the 1820s and 1830s as reformers advocated for a return to the practices and policies of an earlier generation. Many oth-

ers left mainstream Protestantism altogether, opting instead to form their own churches. Some, like Alexander Campbell and Barton

Stone, proposed a return to (or “restoration” of) New Testament Christianity, stripped of centuries of additional teachings and prac-

tices. Other restorationists built on the foundation laid by the evangelical churches by using their methods and means to both critique

the Protestant mainstream and move beyond the accepted boundaries of contemporary Christian orthodoxy. Self-declared prophets

claimed that God had called them to establish new churches and introduce new (or, in their understanding, restore lost) teachings,

forms of worship, and even scripture.

Mormon founder Joseph Smith, for example, claimed that God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision in a grove of

trees near his boyhood home in upstate New York and commanded him to “join none of [the existing churches], for they are all

wrong.” Subsequent visitations from angelic beings revealed to Smith the location of a buried record, purportedly containing the writ-

ings and histories of an ancient Christian civilization on the American continent. Smith published the Book of Mormon in early 1830

and organized the Church of Christ (later renamed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) a short time later. Borrowing from

the Methodists a faith in the abilities of itinerant preachers without formal training, Smith dispatched early converts as missionaries to

take the message of the Book of Mormon throughout the United States, across the ocean to England and Ireland, and eventually even

farther abroad. He attracted a sizable number of followers on both sides of the Atlantic and commanded them to gather to a center

place, where they collectively anticipated the imminent second coming of Christ. Continued growth and near-constant opposition from

both Protestant ministers and neighbors suspicious of their potential political power forced the Mormons to move several times, �rst

from New York to Ohio, then to Missouri, and �nally to Illinois, where they established a thriving community on the banks of the Mis-

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sissippi River. In Nauvoo, as they called their city, Smith moved even further beyond the bounds of the Christian orthodoxy by continu-

ing to pronounce additional revelations and introducing secret rites to be performed in Mormon temples. Most controversially, Smith

and a select group of his most loyal followers began taking additional wives (Smith himself married at least thirty women). Although

Mormon polygamy was not publicly acknowledged and openly practiced until 1852 (when the Mormons had moved yet again, this time

to the protective con�nes of the intermountain west on the shores of the Great Salt Lake), rumors of Smith’s involvement circulated al-

most immediately after its quiet introduction and played a part in the motivations of the mob that eventually murdered the Mormon

prophet in the summer of 1844.

Mormons were not the only religious community in antebellum America to challenge the domestic norms of the era through radical

sexual experiments: Shakers strictly enforced celibacy in their several communes scattered throughout New England and the upper Mid-

west, while John Humphrey Noyes introduced free love (or “complex marriage”) to his Oneida community in upstate New York. Oth-

ers challenged existing cultural customs in less radical ways. For individual worshippers, spiritual egalitarianism in revivals and camp

meetings could break down traditional social conventions. For example, revivals generally admitted both men and women. Furthermore,

in an era when many American Protestants discouraged or outright forbade women from speaking in church meetings, some preachers

provided women with new opportunities to openly express themselves and participate in spiritual communities. This was particularly

true in the Methodist and Baptist traditions, though by the midnineteenth century most of these opportunities would be curtailed as

these denominations attempted to move away from radical revivalism and toward the status of respectable denominations. Some

preachers also promoted racial integration in religious gatherings, expressing equal concern for white and Black people’s spiritual salva-

tion and encouraging both enslavers and the enslaved to attend the same meetings. Historians have even suggested that the extreme

physical and vocal manifestations of conversion seen at impassioned revivals and camp meetings o�ered the ranks of worshippers a way

to enact a sort of social leveling by �outing the codes of self-restraint prescribed by upper-class elites. Although the revivals did not al-

ways live up to such progressive ideals in practice, particularly in the more conservative regions of the slaveholding South, the concept of

spiritual egalitarianism nonetheless changed how Protestant Americans thought about themselves, their God, and one another.

As the borders of the United States expanded during the nineteenth century and as new demographic changes altered urban landscapes,

revivalism also o�ered worshippers a source of social and religious structure to help cope with change. Revival meetings held by itiner-

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ant preachers o�ered community and collective spiritual purpose to migrant families and communities isolated from established social

and religious institutions. In urban centers, where industrialization and European famines brought growing numbers of domestic and

foreign migrants, evangelical preachers provided moral order and spiritual solace to an increasingly anonymous population. Additional-

ly, and quite signi�cantly, the Second Great Awakening armed evangelical Christians with a moral purpose to address and eradicate the

many social problems they saw as arising from these dramatic demographic shifts.

Not all American Christians, though, were taken with the revivals. The early nineteenth century also saw the rise of Unitarianism as a

group of ministers and their followers came to reject key aspects of “orthodox” Protestant belief including the divinity of Christ. Chris-

tians in New England were particularly involved in the debates surrounding Unitarianism as Harvard University became a hotly contest-

ed center of cultural authority between Unitarians and Trinitarians. Unitarianism had important e�ects on the world of reform when a

group of Unitarian ministers founded the Transcendental Club in 1836. The club met for four years and included Ralph Waldo Emer-

son, Bronson Alcott, Frederic Henry Hedge, George Ripley, Orestes Brownson, James Freeman Clarke, and Theodore Parker. While

initially limited to ministers or former ministers—except for the eccentric Alcott—the club quickly expanded to include numerous liter-

ary intellectuals. Among these were the author Henry David Thoreau, the protofeminist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, and the edu-

cational reformer Elizabeth Peabody.

Transcendentalism had no established creed, but this was intentional. What united the Transcendentalists was their belief in a higher

spiritual principle within each person that could be trusted to discover truth, guide moral action, and inspire art. They often referred to

this principle as Soul, Spirit, Mind, or Reason. Deeply in�uenced by British Romanticism and German idealism’s celebration of individ-

ual artistic inspiration, personal spiritual experience, and aspects of human existence not easily explained by reason or logic, the Tran-

scendentalists established an enduring legacy precisely because they developed distinctly American ideas that emphasized individualism,

optimism, oneness with nature, and a modern orientation toward the future rather than the past. These themes resonated in an Ameri-

can nineteenth century where political democracy and readily available land distinguished the United States from Europe.

Ralph Waldo Emerson espoused a religious worldview wherein God, “the eternal ONE,” manifested through the special harmony be-

tween the individual soul and nature. In “The American Scholar” (1837) and “Self-Reliance” (1841), Emerson emphasized the utter re-

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liability and su�ciency of the individual soul and exhorted his audience to overcome “our long apprenticeship to the learning of other

lands.” Emerson believed that the time had come for Americans to declare their intellectual independence from Europe. Henry David

Thoreau espoused a similar enthusiasm for simple living, communion with nature, and self-su�ciency. Thoreau’s sense of rugged indi-

vidualism, perhaps the strongest among even the Transcendentalists, also yielded “Resistance to Civil Government” (1849). Several of

the Transcendentalists also participated in communal living experiments. For example, in the mid-1840s, George Ripley and other mem-

bers of the utopian Brook Farm community began to espouse Fourierism, a vision of society based on cooperative principles, as an alter-

native to capitalist conditions.

Many of these di�erent types of response to the religious turmoil of the time had a similar endpoint in the embrace of voluntary associa-

tions and social reform work. During the antebellum period, many American Christians responded to the moral anxiety of industrializa-

tion and urbanization by organizing to address speci�c social needs. Social problems such as intemperance, vice, and crime assumed a

new and distressing scale that older solutions, such as almshouses, were not equipped to handle. Moralists grew concerned about the

growing mass of urban residents who did not attend church, and who, thanks to poverty or illiteracy, did not even have access to scrip-

ture. Voluntary benevolent societies exploded in number to tackle these issues. Led by ministers and dominated by middle-class women,

voluntary societies printed and distributed Protestant tracts, taught Sunday school, distributed outdoor relief, and evangelized in both

frontier towns and urban slums. These associations and their evangelical members also lent moral backing and workers to large-scale so-

cial reform projects, including the temperance movement designed to curb Americans’ consumption of alcohol, the abolitionist cam-

paign to eradicate slavery in the United States, and women’s rights agitation to improve women’s political and economic rights. As such

wide-ranging reform projects combined with missionary zeal, evangelical Christians formed a “benevolent empire” that swiftly became a

cornerstone of the antebellum period.

III. Atlantic Origins of Reform

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The reform movements that emerged in the United States during the �rst half of the nineteenth century were not American inventions.

Instead, these movements were rooted in a transatlantic world where both sides of the ocean faced similar problems and together collab-

orated to �nd similar solutions. Many of the same factors that spurred American reformers to action—such as urbanization, industrial-

ization, and class struggle—equally a�ected Europe. Reformers on both sides of the Atlantic visited and corresponded with one anoth-

er. Exchanging ideas and building networks proved crucial to shared causes like abolition and women’s rights.

Improvements in transportation, including the introduction of the steamboat, canals, and railroads, connected people not just across

the United States, but also with other like-minded reformers in Europe. (Ironically, the same technologies also helped ensure that even

after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the British remained heavily invested in slavery, both directly and indirectly.) Equally

important, the reduction of publication costs created by new printing technologies in the 1830s allowed reformers to reach new audi-

ences across the world. Almost immediately after its publication in the United States, for instance, Frederick Douglass’s autobiography

was republished in Europe and translated into French and Dutch. This abolitionist who escaped enslavement earned supporters across

the Atlantic.

Such exchanges began as part of the larger processes of colonialism and empire building. Missionary organizations from the colonial era

had created many of these transatlantic links. The Atlantic travel of major �gures during the First Great Awakening such as George

White�eld had built enduring networks. These networks changed as a result of the American Revolution but still revealed spiritual and

personal connections between religious individuals and organizations in the United States and Great Britain. These connections can be

seen in multiple areas. Mission work continued to be a joint e�ort, with American and European missionary societies in close corre-

spondence throughout the early nineteenth century, as they coordinated domestic and foreign evangelistic missions. The transportation

and print revolutions meant that news of British missionary e�orts in India and Tahiti could be quickly printed in American religious

periodicals, galvanizing American e�orts to evangelize Native Americans, frontier settlers, immigrant groups, and even people overseas.

In addition to missions, antislavery work had a decidedly transatlantic cast from its very beginnings. American Quakers began to ques-

tion slavery as early as the late seventeenth century and worked with British reformers in the successful campaign that ended the slave

trade. Before, during, and after the Revolution, many Americans continued to admire European thinkers. In�uence extended both

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east and west. By foregrounding questions about rights, the American Revolution helped inspire British abolitionists, who in turn of-

fered support to their American counterparts. American antislavery activists developed close relationships with abolitionists on the oth-

er side of the Atlantic, such as Thomas Clarkson, Daniel O’Connell, and Joseph Sturge. Prominent American abolitionists such as

Theodore Dwight Weld, Lucretia Mott, and William Lloyd Garrison were converted to the antislavery idea of immediatism—that is, the

demand for emancipation without delay—by British abolitionists Elizabeth Heyrick and Charles Stuart. Although Anglo-American

antislavery networks reached back to the late eighteenth century, they dramatically grew in support and strength over the antebellum

period, as evidenced by the General Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840. This antislavery delegation consisted of more than �ve hundred

abolitionists, mostly coming from France, England, and the United States. All met together in England, united by their common goal of

ending slavery in their time. Although abolitionism was not the largest American reform movement of the antebellum period (that hon-

or belongs to temperance), it did foster greater cooperation among reformers in England and the United States.

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This enormous painting documents the 1840 convention of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, established by both American and English anti-slavery activists to promote worldwide abolition. Benjamin Haydon, The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840. Wikimedia.

In the course of their abolitionist activities, many American women began to establish contact with their counterparts across the At-

lantic, each group penning articles and contributing material support to the others’ antislavery publications and fundraisers. The bonds

between British and American reformers can be traced throughout the many social improvement projects of the nineteenth century.

Transatlantic cooperation galvanized e�orts to reform individuals’ and societies’ relationships to alcohol, labor, religion, education,

commerce, and land ownership. This cooperation stemmed from the recognition that social problems on both sides of the Atlantic were

strikingly similar. Atlantic activists helped American reformers conceptualize themselves as part of a worldwide moral mission to attack

social ills and spread the gospel of Christianity.

IV. The Benevolent Empire

After religious disestablishment, citizens of the United States faced a dilemma: how to cultivate a moral and virtuous public without aid

from state-sponsored religion. Most Americans agreed that a good and moral citizenry was essential for the national project to succeed,

but many shared the perception that society’s moral foundation was weakening. Narratives of moral and social decline, known as je-

remiads, had long been embedded in Protestant story-telling traditions, but jeremiads took on new urgency in the antebellum period. In

the years immediately following disestablishment, “traditional” Protestant Christianity was at low tide, while the Industrial Revolution

and the spread of capitalism had led to a host of social problems associated with cities and commerce. The Second Great Awakening was

in part a spiritual response to such changes, revitalizing Christian spirits through the promise of salvation. The revivals also provided an

institutional antidote to the insecurities of a rapidly changing world by inspiring an immense and widespread movement for social re-

form. Growing directly out of nineteenth-century revivalism, reform societies proliferated throughout the United States between 1815

and 1861, melding religion and reform into a powerful force in American culture known as the benevolent empire.

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The benevolent empire departed from revivalism’s early populism, as middle-class ministers dominated the leadership of antebellum re-

form societies. Because of the economic forces of the market revolution, middle-class evangelicals had the time and resources to devote

to reform campaigns. Often, their reforms focused on creating and maintaining respectable middle-class culture throughout the United

States. Middle-class women, in particular, played a leading role in reform activity. They became increasingly responsible for the moral

maintenance of their homes and communities, and their leadership signaled a dramatic departure from previous generations when such

prominent roles for ordinary women would have been unthinkable.

Di�erent forces within evangelical Protestantism combined to encourage reform. One of the great lights of benevolent reform was

Charles Grandison Finney, the radical revivalist, who promoted a movement known as “perfectionism.” Premised on the belief that tru-

ly redeemed Christians would be motivated to live free of sin and re�ect the perfection of God himself, his wildly popular revivals en-

couraged his converted followers to join reform movements and create God’s kingdom on earth. The idea of “disinterested benevolence”

also turned many evangelicals toward reform. Preachers championing disinterested benevolence argued that true Christianity requires

that a person give up self-love in favor of loving others. Though perfectionism and disinterested benevolence were the most prominent

forces encouraging benevolent societies, some preachers achieved the same end in their advocacy of postmillennialism. In this world-

view, Christ’s return was foretold to occur after humanity had enjoyed one thousand years’ peace, and it was the duty of converted

Christians to improve the world around them in order to pave the way for Christ’s redeeming return. Though ideological and theologi-

cal issues like these divided Protestants into more and more sects, church leaders often worked on an interdenominational basis to estab-

lish benevolent societies and draw their followers into the work of social reform.

Under the leadership of preachers and ministers, reform societies attacked many social problems. Those concerned about drinking

could join temperance societies; other groups focused on eradicating dueling and gambling. Evangelical reformers might support home

or foreign missions or Bible and tract societies. Sabbatarians fought tirelessly to end nonreligious activity on the Sabbath. Moral reform

societies sought to end prostitution and redeem “fallen women.” Over the course of the antebellum period, voluntary associations and

benevolent activists also worked to reform bankruptcy laws, prison systems, insane asylums, labor laws, and education. They built or-

phanages and free medical dispensaries and developed programs to provide professional services like social work, job placement, and day

camps for children in the slums.

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Eastern State Penitentiary changed the principles of imprisonment, focusing on reform rather than punishment. The structure itself used the panopticon surveillance system, and was widely copied by prison systems around the world. P.S: Duval and Co., The State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 1855. Wikimedia.

These organizations often shared membership as individuals found themselves interested in a wide range of reform movements. On An-

niversary Week, many of the major reform groups coordinated the schedules of their annual meetings in New York or Boston to allow

individuals to attend multiple meetings in a single trip.

Among all the social reform movements associated with the benevolent empire, the temperance crusade was the most successful. Cham-

pioned by prominent preachers like Lyman Beecher, the movement’s e�ort to curb the consumption of alcohol galvanized widespread

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support among the middle class. Alcohol consumption became a signi�cant social issue after the American Revolution. Commercial

distilleries produced readily available, cheap whiskey that was frequently more a�ordable than milk or beer and safer than water, and

hard liquor became a staple beverage in many lower- and middle-class households. Consumption among adults skyrocketed in the early

nineteenth century, and alcoholism had become an endemic problem across the United States by the 1820s. As alcoholism became an

increasingly visible issue in towns and cities, most reformers escalated their e�orts from advocating moderation in liquor consumption

to full abstinence from all alcohol.

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N. Currier, “Tree of Temperance” and “Tree of Intemperance,” 1849. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

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Many reformers saw intemperance as the biggest impediment to maintaining order and morality in the young republic. Temperance re-

formers saw a direct correlation between alcohol and other forms of vice and, most importantly, felt that it endangered family life. In

1826, evangelical ministers organized the American Temperance Society to help spread the crusade nationally. It supported lecture cam-

paigns, produced temperance literature, and organized revivals speci�cally aimed at encouraging worshippers to give up the drink. It was

so successful that within a decade, it established �ve thousand branches and grew to over a million members. Temperance reformers

pledged not to touch the bottle and canvassed their neighborhoods and towns to encourage others to join their “Cold Water Army.”

They also in�uenced lawmakers in several states to prohibit the sale of liquor.

In response to the perception that heavy drinking was associated with men who abused, abandoned, or neglected their family obliga-

tions, women formed a signi�cant presence in societies dedicated to eradicating liquor. Temperance became a hallmark of middle-class

respectability among both men and women and developed into a crusade with a visible class character. Temperance, like many other re-

form e�orts, was championed by the middle class and threatened to intrude on the private lives of lower-class workers, many of whom

were Irish Catholics. Such intrusions by the Protestant middle class exacerbated class, ethnic, and religious tensions. Still, while the tem-

perance movement made less substantial inroads into lower-class workers’ drinking culture, the movement was still a great success for

reformers. In the 1840s, Americans drank half of what they had in the 1820s, and per capita consumption continued to decline over the

next two decades. .

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Nathaniel Currier, “The Drunkard’s Progress.” 1846. Wikimedia.

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Though middle-class reformers worked tirelessly to cure all manner of social problems through institutional salvation and voluntary

benevolent work, they regularly participated in religious organizations founded explicitly to address the spiritual mission at the core of

evangelical Protestantism. In fact, for many reformers, it was actually the experience of evangelizing among the poor and seeing �rsthand

the rampant social issues plaguing life in the slums that �rst inspired them to get involved in benevolent reform projects. Modeling

themselves on the British and Foreign Bible Society, formed in 1804 to spread Christian doctrine to the British working class, urban mis-

sionaries emphasized the importance of winning the world for Christ, one soul at a time. For example, the American Bible Society and

the American Tract Society used the e�cient new steam-powered printing press to distribute Bibles and evangelizing religious tracts

throughout the United States. For example, the New York Religious Tract Society alone managed to distribute religious tracts to all but

388 of New York City’s 28,383 families. In places like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, middle-class women also established

groups speci�cally to canvass neighborhoods and bring the gospel to lower-class “wards.”

Such evangelical missions extended well beyond the urban landscape, however. Stirred by nationalism and moral purpose, evangelicals

labored to make sure the word of God reached far-�ung settlers on the new American frontier. The American Bible Society distributed

thousands of Bibles to frontier areas where churches and clergy were scarce, while the American Home Missionary Society provided

substantial �nancial assistance to frontier congregations struggling to achieve self-su�ciency. Missionaries worked to translate the Bible

into Iroquois and other languages in order to more e�ectively evangelize Native American populations. As e�cient printing technology

and faster transportation facilitated new transatlantic and global connections, religious Americans also began to �ex their missionary

zeal on a global stage. In 1810, for example, Presbyterian and Congregationalist leaders established the American Board of Commission-

ers for Foreign Missions to evangelize in India, Africa, East Asia, and the Paci�c.

The potent combination of social reform and evangelical mission at the heart of the nineteenth century’s benevolent empire produced

reform agendas and institutional changes that have reverberated through the twentieth and twenty-�rst centuries. By devoting their time

to the moral uplift of their communities and the world at large, middle-class reformers created many of the largest and most in�uential

organizations in the nation’s history. For the optimistic, religiously motivated American, no problem seemed too great to solve.

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Di�culties arose, however, when the benevolent empire attempted to take up more explicitly political issues. The movement against In-

dian removal was the �rst major example of this. Missionary work had �rst brought the Cherokee Nation to the attention of northeast-

ern evangelicals in the early nineteenth century. Missionaries sent by the American Board and other groups sought to introduce Chris-

tianity and American cultural values to the Cherokee and celebrated when their e�orts seemed to be met with success. Evangelicals pro-

claimed that the Cherokee were becoming “civilized,” which could be seen in their adoption of a written language and of a constitution

modeled on that of the U.S. government. Mission supporters were shocked, then, when the election of Andrew Jackson brought a new

emphasis on the removal of Native Americans from the land east of the Mississippi River. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was met

with �erce opposition from within the a�ected Native American communities as well as from the benevolent empire. Jeremiah Evarts,

one of the leaders of the American Board, wrote a series of essays under the pen name William Penn urging Americans to oppose re-

moval. He used the religious and moral arguments of the mission movement but added a new layer of politics in his extensive discus-

sion of the history of treaty law between the United States and Native Americans. This political shift was even more evident when

American missionaries challenged Georgia state laws asserting sovereignty over Cherokee territory in the Supreme Court Case Worcester

v. Georgia. Although the case was successful, the federal government did not enforce the Court’s decision, and Indian removal was ac-

complished through the Trail of Tears, the tragic, forced removal of Native Americans to territories west of the Mississippi River.

Anti-removal activism was also notable for the entry of ordinary American women into political discourse. The �rst major petition cam-

paign by American women focused on opposition to removal and was led (anonymously) by Catharine Beecher. Beecher was already a

leader in the movement to reform women’s education and came to her role in removal through her connections to the mission move-

ment. Inspired by a meeting with Jeremiah Evarts, Beecher echoed his arguments from the William Penn letters in her appeal to Ameri-

can women. Beecher called on women to petition the government to end the policy of Indian removal. She used religious and moral

arguments to justify women’s entry into political discussion when it concerned an obviously moral cause. This e�ort was ultimately un-

successful but still introduced the kinds of arguments that paved the way for women’s political activism for abolitionism and women’s

rights. The divisions that the anti-removal campaign revealed became more dramatic with the next political cause of nineteenth century

reformers: abolitionism.

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V. Antislavery and Abolitionism

The revivalist doctrines of salvation, perfectionism, and disinterested benevolence led many evangelical reformers to believe that slavery

was the most God-defying of all sins and the most terrible blight on the moral virtue of the United States. While white interest in and

commitment to abolition had existed for several decades, organized antislavery advocacy had been largely restricted to models of gradual

emancipation (seen in several northern states following the American Revolution) and conditional emancipation (seen in colonization

e�orts to remove Black Americans to settlements in Africa). The colonizationist movement of the early nineteenth century had drawn

together a broad political spectrum of Americans with its promise of gradually ending slavery in the United States by removing the free

Black population from North America. By the 1830s, however, a rising tide of anticolonization sentiment among northern free Black

Americans and middle-class evangelicals’ �ourishing commitment to social reform radicalized the movement. Baptists such as William

Lloyd Garrison, Congregational revivalists like Arthur and Lewis Tappan and Theodore Dwight Weld, and radical Quakers including

Lucretia Mott and John Greenleaf Whittier helped push the idea of immediate emancipation onto the center stage of northern reform

agendas. Inspired by a strategy known as “moral suasion,” these young abolitionists believed they could convince enslavers to voluntarily

release their enslaved laborers by appealing to their sense of Christian conscience. The result would be national redemption and moral

harmony.

William Lloyd Garrison’s early life and career famously illustrated this transition toward immediatism. As a young man immersed in the

reform culture of antebellum Massachusetts, Garrison had fought slavery in the 1820s by advocating for both Black colonization and

gradual abolition. Fiery tracts penned by Black northerners David Walker and James Forten, however, convinced Garrison that coloniza-

tion was an inherently racist project and that African Americans possessed a hard-won right to the fruits of American liberty. So, in

1831, he established a newspaper called The Liberator, through which he organized and spearheaded an unprecedented interracial cru-

sade dedicated to promoting immediate emancipation and Black citizenship. Then, in 1833, Garrison presided as reformers from ten

states came together to create the American Anti-Slavery Society. They rested their mission for immediate emancipation “upon the Dec-

laration of our Independence, and upon the truths of Divine Revelation,” binding their cause to both national and Christian redemp-

tion. Abolitionists fought to save the enslaved and thereby save the nation.

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The Liberator, April 17, 1857. Masthead designed by Hammatt Billings in 1850. Metropolitan State University.

In order to accomplish their goals, abolitionists employed every method of outreach and agitation. At home in the North, abolitionists

established hundreds of antislavery societies and worked with long-standing associations of Black activists to establish schools, churches,

and voluntary associations. Women and men of all colors were encouraged to associate together in these spaces to combat what they

termed “color phobia.” Harnessing the potential of steam-powered printing and mass communication, abolitionists also blanketed the

free states with pamphlets and antislavery newspapers. They blared their arguments from lyceum podiums and broadsides. Prominent

individuals such as Wendell Phillips and Angelina Grimké saturated northern media with shame-inducing exposés of northern complici-

ty in the return of freedom-seeking fugitive enslaved people, and white reformers sentimentalized slave narratives that tugged at middle-

class heartstrings. Abolitionists used the U.S. Postal Service in 1835 to inundate southern enslavers with calls to emancipate their en-

slaved laborers in order to save their souls, and, in 1836, they prepared thousands of petitions for Congress as part of the Great Petition

Campaign. In the six years from 1831 to 1837, abolitionist activities reached dizzying heights.28

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However, such e�orts encountered �erce opposition, as most Americans did not share abolitionists’ particular brand of nationalism. In

fact, abolitionists remained a small, marginalized group detested by most white Americans in both the North and the South. Immedi-

atists were attacked as the harbingers of disunion, rabble-rousers who would stir up sectional tensions and thereby imperil the American

experiment of self-government. Particularly troubling to some observers was the public engagement of women as abolitionist speakers

and activists. Fearful of disunion and outraged by the interracial nature of abolitionism, northern mobs smashed abolitionist printing

presses and even killed a prominent antislavery newspaper editor named Elijah Lovejoy. White southerners, believing that abolitionists

had incited Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, aggressively purged antislavery dissent from the region. Violent harassment threatened aboli-

tionists’ personal safety. In Congress, Whigs and Democrats joined forces in 1836 to pass an unprecedented restriction on freedom of

political expression known as the gag rule, prohibiting all discussion of abolitionist petitions in the House of Representatives. Two years

later, mobs attacked the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, throwing rocks through the windows and burning the newly

constructed Pennsylvania Hall to the ground.

In the face of such substantial external opposition, the abolitionist movement began to splinter. In 1839, an ideological schism shook

the foundations of organized antislavery. Moral suasionists, led most prominently by William Lloyd Garrison, felt that the U.S. Consti-

tution was a fundamentally pro-slavery document, and that the present political system was irredeemable. They dedicated their e�orts

exclusively toward persuading the public to redeem the nation by reestablishing it on antislavery grounds. However, many abolitionists,

reeling from the level of entrenched opposition met in the 1830s, began to feel that moral suasion was no longer realistic. Instead, they

believed, abolition would have to be e�ected through existing political processes. So, in 1839, political abolitionists formed the Liberty

Party under the leadership of James G. Birney. This new abolitionist society was predicated on the belief that the U.S. Constitution was

actually an antislavery document that could be used to abolish the stain of slavery through the national political system.

Women’s rights, too, divided abolitionists. Many abolitionists who believed full-heartedly in moral suasion nonetheless felt compelled to

leave the American Anti-Slavery Society because, in part, it elevated women to leadership positions and endorsed women’s su�rage. This

question came to a head when, in 1840, Abby Kelly was elected to the business committee of the society. The elevation of women to full

leadership roles was too much for some conservative members who saw this as evidence that the society had lost sight of its most impor-

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tant goal. Under the leadership of Arthur Tappan, they left to form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. These disputes be-

came so bitter and acrimonious that former friends cut social ties and traded public insults.

Another signi�cant shift stemmed from the disappointments of the 1830s. Abolitionists in the 1840s increasingly moved from agendas

based on reform to agendas based on resistance. Moral suasionists continued to appeal to hearts and minds, and political abolitionists

launched sustained campaigns to bring abolitionist agendas to the ballot box. Meanwhile the entrenched and violent opposition of both

enslavers and the northern public encouraged abolitionists to �nd other avenues of �ghting the slave power. Increasingly, for example,

abolitionists aided runaway enslaved people established international antislavery networks to pressure the United States to abolish slav-

ery. Frederick Douglass represented the intersection of these two trends. After escaping from slavery, Douglass came to the fore of the

abolitionist movement as a naturally gifted orator and a powerful narrator of his experiences in slavery. His �rst autobiography, pub-

lished in 1845, was so widely read that it was reprinted in nine editions and translated into several languages. Douglass traveled to

Great Britain in 1845 and met with famous British abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson, drumming up moral and �nancial support from

British and Irish antislavery societies. His great success abroad contributed signi�cantly to rousing morale among weary abolitionists at

home.

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Frederick Douglass was perhaps the most famous African American abolitionist, �ghting tirelessly not only for the end of slavery but for equal rights of all American citizens. This copy of a daguerreotype shows him as a young man, around the age of 29 and soon after his self-emancipation. Print, c. 1850 after c. 1847 daguerreotype. Wikimedia.

The model of resistance to the slave power only became more pronounced after 1850, when a long-standing Fugitive Slave Act was given

new teeth. Though a legal mandate to return runaway enslaved people had existed in U.S. federal law since 1793, the Fugitive Slave Act

of 1850 upped the ante by harshly penalizing o�cials who failed to arrest runaways and private citizens who tried to help them. This

law, coupled with growing concern over the possibility that slavery would be allowed in Kansas when it was admitted as a state, made the

1850s a highly volatile and violent period of American antislavery. Reform took a backseat as armed mobs protected freedom-seeking

enslaved people in the North and forti�ed abolitionists engaged in bloody skirmishes in the West. Culminating in John Brown’s raid on

Harper’s Ferry, the violence of the 1850s convinced many Americans that the issue of slavery was pushing the nation to the brink of sec-

tional cataclysm. After two decades of immediatist agitation, the idealism of revivalist perfectionism had given way to a protracted battle

for the moral soul of the country.

For all of the problems that abolitionism faced, the movement was far from a failure. The prominence of African Americans in aboli-

tionist organizations o�ered a powerful, if imperfect, model of interracial coexistence. While immediatists always remained a minority,

their e�orts paved the way for the moderately antislavery Republican Party to gain traction in the years preceding the Civil War. It is

hard to imagine that Abraham Lincoln could have become president in 1860 without the ground prepared by antislavery advocates and

without the presence of radical abolitionists against whom he could be cast as a moderate alternative. Though it ultimately took a civil

war to break the bonds of slavery in the United States, the evangelical moral compass of revivalist Protestantism provided motivation for

the embattled abolitionists.

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VI. Women’s Rights in Antebellum America

In the era of revivalism and reform, Americans understood the family and home as the hearthstones of civic virtue and moral in�uence.

This increasingly con�ned middle-class white women to the domestic sphere, where they were responsible for educating children and

maintaining household virtue. Yet women took the very ideology that de�ned their place in the home and managed to use it to fashion a

public role for themselves. As a result, women actually became more visible and active in the public sphere than ever before. The in�u-

ence of the Second Great Awakening, coupled with new educational opportunities available to girls and young women, enabled white

middle-class women to leave their homes en masse, joining and forming societies dedicated to everything from literary interests to the

antislavery movement.

In the early nineteenth century, the dominant understanding of gender claimed that women were the guardians of virtue and the spiri-

tual heads of the home. Women were expected to be pious, pure, submissive, and domestic, and to pass these virtues on to their chil-

dren. Historians have described these expectations as the “Cult of Domesticity,” or the “Cult of True Womanhood,” and they developed

in tandem with industrialization, the market revolution, and the Second Great Awakening. These economic and religious transforma-

tions increasingly seemed to divide the world into the public space of work and politics and the domestic space of leisure and morality.

Voluntary work related to labor laws, prison reform, and antislavery applied women’s roles as guardians of moral virtue to address all

forms of social issues that they felt contributed to the moral decline of society. In spite of this apparent valuation of women’s position in

society, there were clear limitations. Under the terms of coverture, men gained legal control over their wives’ property, and women with

children had no legal rights over their o�spring. Additionally, women could not initiate divorce, make wills, sign contracts, or vote.

Female education provides an example of the great strides made by and for women during the antebellum period. As part of a larger edu-

cation reform movement in the early republic, several female reformers worked tirelessly to increase women’s access to education. They

argued that if women were to take charge of the education of their children, they needed to be well educated themselves. While the

women’s education movement did not generally push for women’s political or social equality, it did assert women’s intellectual equality

with men, an idea that would eventually have important e�ects. Educators such as Emma Willard, Catharine Beecher, and Mary Lyons

(founders of the Troy Female Seminary, Hartford Female Seminary, and Mount Holyoke Seminary, respectively) adopted the same rig-

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orous curriculum that was used for boys. Many of these schools had the particular goal of training women to be teachers. Many gradu-

ates of these prominent seminaries would found their own schools, spreading women’s education across the country, and with it ideas

about women’s potential to take part in public life.

The abolitionist movement was another important school for women’s public engagement. Many of the earliest women’s rights advo-

cates began their activism by �ghting the injustices of slavery, including Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. In the 1830s, women in cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia established

female societies dedicated to the antislavery cause. Initially, these societies were similar to the prayer and fund-raising-based projects of

other reform societies. As such societies proliferated, however, their strategies changed. Women could not vote, for example, but they

increasingly used their right to petition to express their antislavery grievances to the government. Impassioned women like the Grimké

sisters even began to travel on lecture circuits. This latter strategy, born of fervent antislavery advocacy, ultimately tethered the cause of

women’s rights to abolitionism.

Sarah Moore Grimké and Angelina Emily Grimké were born to a wealthy family in Charleston, South Carolina, where they witnessed

the horrors of slavery �rsthand. Repulsed by the treatment of the enslaved laborers on the Grimké plantation, they decided to support

the antislavery movement by sharing their experiences on northern lecture tours. At �rst speaking to female audiences, they soon attract-

ed “promiscuous” crowds of both men and women. They were among the earliest and most famous American women to take such a

public role in the name of reform. When the Grimké sisters met substantial harassment and opposition to their public speaking on anti-

slavery, they were inspired to speak out against more than the slave system. They began to see that they would need to �ght for women’s

rights in order to �ght for the rights of enslaved people. Other female abolitionists soon joined them in linking the issues of women’s

rights and abolitionism by drawing direct comparisons between the condition of free women in the United States and the condition of

the slave.

As the antislavery movement gained momentum in northern states in the 1830s and 1840s, so too did e�orts for women’s rights. These

e�orts came to a head at an event that took place in London in 1840. That year, Lucretia Mott was among the American delegates at-

tending the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Because of ideological disagreements between some of the abolitionists, the

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convention’s organizers refused to seat the female delegates or allow them to vote during the proceedings. Angered by such treatment,

Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whose husband was also a delegate, returned to the United States with a renewed interest in pursuing

women’s rights. In 1848, they organized the Seneca Falls Convention, a two-day summit in New York state in which women’s rights ad-

vocates came together to discuss the problems facing women.

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Lucretia Mott campaigned for women’s rights, abolition, and equality in the United States. Joseph Kyle (artist), Lucretia Mott, 1842. Wikimedia.

Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments for the Seneca Falls Convention to capture the wide range of issues embraced by the early

women’s rights movement. She modeled the document on the Declaration of Independence to make explicit the connection between

women’s liberty and the rhetoric of America’s founding. The Declaration of Sentiments outlined �fteen grievances and eleven resolu-

tions. They championed property rights, access to the professions, and, most controversially, the right to vote. Sixty-eight women and

thirty-two men, all of whom were already involved in some aspect of reform, signed the Declaration of Sentiments.34

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Antebellum women’s rights fought what they perceived as senseless gender discrimination, such as the barring of women from college

and inferior pay for female teachers. They also argued that men and women should be held to the same moral standards. The Seneca

Falls Convention was the �rst of many such gatherings promoting women’s rights, held almost exclusively in the northern states. Yet the

women’s rights movement grew slowly and experienced few victories. Few states reformed married women’s property laws before the

Civil War, and no state was prepared to o�er women the right to vote during the antebellum period. At the onset of the Civil War,

women’s rights advocates temporarily threw the bulk of their support behind abolition, allowing the cause of racial equality to tem-

porarily trump that of gender equality. But the words of the Seneca Falls convention continued to inspire generations of activists.

VII. Conclusion

By the time civil war erupted in 1861, the revival and reform movements of the antebellum period had made an indelible mark on the

American landscape. The Second Great Awakening ignited Protestant spirits by connecting evangelical Christians in national networks

of faith. Social reform spurred members of the middle class to promote national morality and the public good. Not all reform projects

were equally successful, however. While the temperance movement made substantial inroads against the excesses of alcohol consump-

tion, the abolitionist movement proved so divisive that it paved the way for sectional crisis. Yet participation in reform movements, re-

gardless of their ultimate success, encouraged many Americans to see themselves in new ways. Black activists became a powerful voice in

antislavery societies, for example, developing domestic and transnational connections to pursue the cause of liberty. Middle-class

women’s dominant presence in the benevolent empire encouraged them to pursue a full-�edged women’s right movement that has last-

ed in various forms up through the present day. In their e�orts to make the United States a more virtuous and moral nation, nineteenth-

century reform activists developed cultural and institutional foundations for social change that have continued to reverberate through

the twentieth and twenty-�rst centuries.

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VIII. Primary Sources

1. Revivalist Charles G. Finney emphasizes human choice in salvation, 1836

Charles Grandison Finney left a successful law practice when he believed God called him to become a preacher. He enjoyed great

success, particularly in Upstate New York, a region that Finney called “the burned over district.” Finney’s revivals emphasized hu-

man action, and he encouraged his converts to join various reform organizations, including avoiding alcohol and eventually oppos-

ing slavery.

2. Dorothea Dix defends the mentally ill, 1843

Dorothea Dix worked as an educator and author until she took up the campaign for improving the treatment for the mentally ill.

Struggling with depression and other mental illnesses herself, Dix presented this petition to the Massachusetts state legislature after

visiting a number of jails to chronicle abuses.

3. David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, 1829

David Walker was the son of an enslaved man and a free Black woman. He traveled widely before settling in Boston where he

worked in and owned clothing stores and involved himself in various reform causes. In 1829, he wrote the remarkable Appeal to the

Colored Citizens of the World. In it, he exposed the hypocrisies of American claims of freedom and Christianity, attacked the plan

to colonize Black Americans in Africa, and predicted that God’s justice promised violence for the slaveholding United States.

4. William Lloyd Garrison introduces The Liberator, 1831

William Lloyd Garrison participated in reform causes in Massachusetts from a young age. In the 1820s he advocated Black coloniza-

tion in Africa and the gradual abolition of slavery. Reading the work of Black northerners like David Walker changed his mind. In

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1831, he created a newspaper, called The Liberator. The following is the opening essay that Garrison used to explain the purpose of

his paper.

5. Angelina Grimké, Appeal to Christian Women of the South, 1836

Women were active participants in every aspect of the abolitionist movement. In this document, Angelina Grimké, a former South-

erner herself, attempts to persuade Southern women of the immorality of slavery. This tactic, called moral suasion, directed the ef-

forts of abolitionists, especially in the 1830s and 1840s.

6. Sarah Grimké calls for women’s rights, 1838

Antebellum Americans increasingly con�ned middle-class white women to the home, where they were responsible for educating

children and maintaining household virtue. Yet women used these ideas to become more active in the public sphere than ever be-

fore, taking prominent roles in all the major reform causes of the era. Women’s participation in the antislavery crusade most directly

inspired speci�c women’s rights campaigns. In this document, Sarah Moore Grimké calls for equality between men and women.

7. Henry David Thoreau re�ects on nature, 1854

The Transcendentalist movement began in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1836, when a group of Unitarian clergymen formed what

later became known as the Transcendental Club. The club met for four years and quickly expanded to include numerous literary

intellectuals. Among these were the author Henry David Thoreau. In 1845, Thoreau took up residence at Walden Pond and began

to write. The result was Walden, which touted simple living, communion with nature, and self-su�ciency.

8. The fruit of alcohol and temperance lithographs, 1849

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/religion-and-reform/angelina-grimke-appeal-to-christian-women-of-the-south-1836/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/religion-and-reform/sarah-grimke-calls-for-womens-rights-1838/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/religion-and-reform/henry-david-thoreau-reflects-on-nature-1854/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-fruit-of-alcohol-and-temperance/

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This pair of lithographs, created by Nathaniel Currier (later of Currier & Ives fame), contrasts the “fruits” of abstaining from alco-

hol to those of indulging in strong drink. It leaves little to the imagination. Intemperance is symbolized by a diseased tree, sur-

rounded by drunks outside of a pawn shop and a woman and her children being thrown out of their home. The lush foliage of

temperance, on the other hand, is surrounded by prosperous church-going farm families.

9. Missionary society membership certi�cate, 1848

The Second Great Awakening moved American evangelicals to proselytize at home and abroad. The image on this lifetime mem-

bership certi�cate to a missionary society shows how the new member’s money will be used. The guiding hand of Providence and

an angel bearing a book (presumably a Bible) hover at the top of the image. In the background, a mosque topples over. An African

family kneels and reaches towards the heavens on the left side, while a minister preaches to Native Americans gathered before him

on the right.

IX. Reference Material

This chapter was edited by Emily Conroy-Krutz, with content contributions by Elena Abbott, Cameron Blevins, Frank Cirillo, Justin

Clark, Emily Conroy-Krutz, Nicolas Ho�mann, Christopher C. Jones, Jonathan Koefoed, Charles McCrary, William E. Skidmore,

Megan Stanton, Kelly Weber, and Ben Wright.

Recommended citation: Elena Abbott et al., “Religion and Reform,” Emily Conroy-Krutz, ed., in The American Yawp, eds. Joseph

Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/missionary-society-membership-certificate/

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