Baltimore Polytechnic InstituteNovember 16, 2010

A.P. U.S. HistoryMr. 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.

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.

Focus Questions Due for Chapter 15 on Tuesday.

Submit Presidential Election Charts 1828, 1832, 1836, 1840-your are losing points if you have not submitted them for grading

Decades Chart for the 1830’s due WednesdayQuiz on Tuesday covering Chapter 15

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

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

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

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

Most Americans wrote political essays, not literature

Common Sense, Federalist

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

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

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

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

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

Finish reading all of Chapter 16

5 Question reading check at the beginning of class.