CH12.PPT
THE PURSUIT OF PERFECTION
America: Past and Present
Chapter 12
The Rise of Evangelicalism
- Separation of church and state gives all churches the chance to compete for converts
- Pious Protestants form voluntary associations to combat sin, “infidelity”
The Second Great Awakening: The Frontier Phase
- Camp meetings contribute to frontier life
provide emotional religion
offer opportunity for social life
- Camp meeting revivals convey intensely personal religious message
- Camp meetings rarely lead to social reform
The Second Great Awakening in the North
- In New England reformers defend Calvinism against the Enlightenment
- Charles G. Finney rejects Calvinism to preach free will
- Finney preaches in upstate New York
- Finney stresses revival techniques
- Revivals lead to organization of more churches
From Revivalism to Reform
- Northern revivals stimulate reform
- Middle-class participants adapt evangelical religion to preserve traditional values
- "The benevolent empire" of evangelical reform movements alter American life
e.g. temperance movement cuts alcohol consumption by more than fifty percent
Domesticity and Changes in the American Family
- New conception of family’s role in society
- Child rearing seen as essential preparation for self-disciplined Christian life
- Women confined to domestic sphere
- Women assume crucial role within home
Marriage for Love
- Mutual love must characterize marriage
- Wives became more of a companion to their husbands and less of a servant
- Legally, the husband was the unchallenged head of the household
The Cult of Domesticity
- "The Cult of True Womanhood"
places women in the home
glorifies home as center of all efforts to civilize and Christianize society
- Middle- and upper-class women increasingly dedicated to the home as mothers
- Women of leisure enter reform movements
The Discovery of Childhood
- Nineteenth-century child the center of family
- Each child seen as unique, irreplaceable
- Ideal to form child’s character with affection
- Parental discipline to instill guilt, not fear
- Train child to learn self-discipline
Institutional Reform
- Domesticity to inform public institutions
- Schools continue what family begins
- Asylums, prisons mend family’s failures
The Extension of Education
- Public schools expand rapidly 1820-1850
- Working class sees as means to advance
- Middle-class reformers see as means for inculcating values of hard work, responsibility
- Horace Mann argues schools save immigrants, poor children from parents’ bad influence
- Many parents believe public schools alienate children from their parents
Discovering the Asylum
- Poor, criminal, insane seen as lacking self-discipline
- Harsh measures to promote rehabilitation
solitary confinement of prisoners
strict daily schedule
- Public support for rehabilitation skimpy
- Prisons, asylums, poorhouses become warehouses for the unwanted
Reform Turns Radical
- Most reform aims to improve society
- Some radical reformers seek destruction of old society, creation of perfect social order
Divisions in the Benevolent Empire
- Radical perfectionists impatient by 1830s, split from moderate reform
temperance movement
peace movement
antislavery movement
- Moderates seek gradual end to slavery
- Radicals demand immediate emancipation
- 1833--American Anti-Slavery Society
The Abolitionist Enterprise:
Theodore Dwight Weld
- Weld an itinerant minister converted by Finney
- Adapted his revivalist techniques to abolition
- Successful mass meetings in Ohio, New York
The Abolitionist Enterprise: Public Reception
- Appeal to hard-working small town folk
- Opposition in cities & near Mason-Dixon line
- Opposition from the working class
dislike blacks
fear black economic and social competition
- Solid citizens see abolitionists as anarchists
The Abolitionist Enterprise: Obstacles
- Abolitionists hampered by in-fighting
- William Lloyd Garrison disrupts movement by associating with radical reform efforts
urged abolitionists to abstain from participating in the political process
also got involved in women’s rights movement
- Some abolitionists help form the Liberty Party in 1840
Black Abolitionists
- Former slaves related the horrible realities of bondage
prominent figures included Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth
- Black newspapers, books, and pamphlets publicized abolitionism to a wider audience
- Blacks were also active in the Underground Railroad
From Abolitionism to Women's Rights
- Abolitionism open to women’s participation
- Involvement raises awareness of women’s inequality
- Seneca Falls Convention in 1848
Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organize
prompted by experience of inequality in abolition movement
begins movement for women’s rights
Radical Ideas & Experiments: Utopian Communities
- Utopian socialism
Inspired by Robert Owen, Charles Fourier
New Harmony, Indiana—Owenite
Fourierite phalanxes
- Religious utopianism
Shakers
Oneida Community
Utopian Communities Before the Civil War
Radical Ideas & Experiments: Transcendentalism
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Margaret Fuller
- George Ripley
founded cooperative community at Brook Farm
- Henry David Thoreau
Counterpoint on Reform
- Reform encounters perceptive critics
Nathaniel Hawthorne allegorically refuted perfectionist movements
- Reform prompts necessary changes in American life
