Day 59: The Ferment of Reform and CultureBaltimore Polytechnic Institute

November 21, 2013A/A.P. U.S. History

Mr. Green

Objectives: Students will analyze antebellum reform movements including religion, education, prohibition, and women’s rights.Describe the widespread revival of religion in the early nineteenth century and its effects on American culture and social reform.Describe the cause of the most important American reform movements of the period, identifying which were most successful and why.

AP FocusThe Second Great Awakening releases a torrent of religious fervor, combining a belief in moral self-improvement and a wish to expand democracy by means of evangelicalism. Religion and Reform are among the new AP themes.From the 1830s to 1850s, the nation experiences a burst of reform activity. Various movements set out to democratize the nation further by combating what they see as institutions and ideas that thwart the expression of democratic values and principles.

The Ferment of Reform and Culture

CHAPTER THEMEThe spectacular religious revivals of

the Second Great Awakening reversed a trend toward secular rationalism in American culture and helped to fuel a spirit of social reform. In the process, religion was increasingly feminized, while women, in turn, took the lead in movements of reform, including those designed to improve their own condition.

Chapter Focus

Continue your work on Presidential Election Charts 1836, 1840, 1844, 1848

Decades Chart for the 1830’s due FridayQuiz on Friday covering Chapter 14

Announcements

Conditions for womenLife was home, required to obey her master (husband), could not vote, subject to beatings, could not keep property after marriage Many women avoided marriage now, something they couldn’t necessarily do in the colonial period

Female reformersMost female reformers were rich and whiteJoined in reform for temperance and abolition as wellLucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Blackwell, Margaret Fuller, Sarah and Angeline Grimke, Lucy Stone, Amelia Bloomer(bloomers – short skirt with Turkish pants)Rights convention – Declaration of Sentiments – demands for women – launched modern women’s rights movement

Woman’s Rights Convention at SenecaFalls, NY - 1848

Women in Revolt

Cooperative societies virtually all failed or changed their methods sooner or later

New Harmony – colony sank out of confusionBrook Farm – lost a new building before it was

finished in 1846, collapsed in debtOneida Community – free love, birth control,

eugenics to get better offspringLasted 30 years making good steel traps and silver plates

Shakers – Upstate New YorkExtinct by 1940 because they prohibited marriage and sex

Reform and Culture

Prof. Benjamin Silliman, Prof. Louis Agassiz, Prof. Asa Gray, John J. Audubon – Birds of America

Audubon Society for the protection of birds

Medicine bleeding was common cure, smallpox plagues still an issue, yellow fever in Philadelphia 1793, malaria, no knowledge of germs and sanitationLife expectancy was 40 years for a white born in 1850Decayed teeth, tooth extraction done by blacksmith Fad dietsMedicine by regular doctors was harmfulSurgery performed after stiff whiskey, patient tied downLaughing gas and ether developed in early 1840s

Dawn of Scientific Achievemet

Imitated European models – public buildings in Greek and Roman style1820-1850 Greek revival Thomas Jefferson brought classical designs with Monticello

Painting suffered because people just didn’t have time. Working hard for dollars Early painters went to England People thought it was a sinful waste of time

Some competent painters like Gilbert Stuart, Charles Wilson Peale (MD), John Trumbull

Hudson River School known for landscapesPainting’s competition was the daguerreotype in 1839

Minstrel shows – white actors in blackface singing “darky music”

Stephen Foster went to the south once, then went back to PA to write some of the most popular American folk music – captured spirit of the slaves

Artistic Achievements

Most Americans wrote political essays, not literature

Common Sense, Federalist papers

After 1812, nationalism increased and the northeast wasn’t too focused on surviving – had time to write

Knickerbocker Group in NY, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant

Blossoming of a National Literature

Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated what literary movement?

Transcendentalism – truth transcends the senses, cannot be found by observation alone, everyone has inner light that can illuminate the highest truth and put him or her in direct touch with God -no precise definition

Individualism -self-reliance, self-culture, self-discipline

Thoreau was jailed for not paying taxes – condemned a government that supported slavery

Trumpeters of Transcendentalism

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ◦ Poetry

John Greenleaf Whittier◦ Influenced social action

James Russell Lowell◦ Poet

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes◦ Anatomy teacher

Louisa May Alcott◦ Little Women

Emily DickinsonWilliam Gilmore Simms

Glowing Literary Lights

Edgar Allen PoeOrphaned, had diseases, wife died of TB at 13

Failed to kill himself, went to drinkingHorror writing

Nathaniel Hawthorne Scarlet LetterStruggle between good and evil, original sin

Herman MelvilleMoby DickStories of the south seas where he traveled and escaped cannibals

Literary Individualists/Dissenters

George Bancroft◦ Helped found Naval Academy ◦ History of the U.S. to 1789

William H. Prescott ◦ Accounts of conquest of Mexico and Peru◦ France v. Britain in colonial times

Historians ◦ New Englanders

Portrayers of the Past

1. What inspired the many utopian communities of the early 19th century? What issues or problems did various utopias attempt to address? Should the utopias be viewed as failures because most did not last long or attain the perfection they sought? Or should they be seen as natural, intense outgrowths of America’s own utopian ideals, of liberty, equality, and democracy?

Independent Work

Finish reading all of Chapter 15

Quiz at the beginning of class on Friday.

Homework