Second Great Awakening

Beginnings of an Awakening

• Early 1700s: Great Awakening• Beginning in the early 1800s– Second Great Awakening

Charles Grandison Finney• One of the most

influential “revivalists” of the Second Great Awakening– Revivalists: traveling

preachers who wanted to revive the role of religion in America

• Gave passionate sermons

African American Religion• -welcomed African

Americans • -establish their own

revivals and churches– African Methodist

Episcopal Church (1816)– Led by Richard Allen– Religion offered promise

of eternal freedom after a life of oppression

New Religious Groups Form

• Mormons: led by Joseph Smith– spoke and wrote of visions that led him to creating

this new religious group– Organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints in 1830• Grew rapidly

• Unitarians: belief that the trinity should be seen as a single divine being– Began in New England from Puritan churches

Religious Discrimination• Mormons: – Americans were weary of the Mormon church

because they had isolated themselves– Some of their practices were frowned upon by

society– Were chased away from their communities • Sought refuge in other states: Illinois, city of Nauvoo• Joseph Smith killed by an angry mob of non-Mormons

in Illinois • Brigham Young – New leader that takes them to Utah

Religious Discrimination• Catholics: – viewed as incompatible with American ideals of

democracy• loyalty to the Pope over loyalty to the United States

– Discriminated against for their extreme poverty• Would work for very low wages, angered non-Catholic

workers

• Jewish People: – Were excluded from holding public office– In early 1800s, only 2,000 Jewish people in America

Utopian Society

• Utopian Communities: aspired to create perfect communities, or utopias– Shared property, labor, and family life– Hoped to engender virtue in their members and inspire

other communities– Ex:

• New Harmony, Indiana– People from different backgrounds worked together in a cooperative

society– Lasted two years

• Brook Farm, Massachusetts– Sought to combine physical and intellectual labor– Lasted 6 years

United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing

• Also known as Shakers• Set up independent villages in New

Hampshire, New York, Ohio, and Illinois– Men and women lived in separate housing– Did not marry or have children

Transcendentalism

• Transcendentalists: people who believed that you could go beyond their senses and learn about he world– Ralph Waldo Emerson– Henry David Thoreau• Civil Disobedience

• Individuals should listen to nature and their own consciences, rather than religious doctrines to learn the truth of the universe

Thoreau Emerson

Reform & Society

Inspiration

• Second Great Awakening– Revival of religious feeling in the United States led

to the belief that society needed to undergo significant changes, or reforms.• Education, mental health, prison, abolition, women’s

rights, etc.

Education Beginnings• most American children were taught by their

parents– Some established community schools

• The American Spelling Book: published by Noah Webster – Language differences between America and

England– new, more direct ways of spelling• Example:

America: color England: colour

Education Movements• Education within the United States was seen

as inadequate– Public School Movement: Hoped to establish tax &

state supported public schools for all children• Required attendance

– Argued that education would give individuals the knowledge and tools to make decisions as citizens of democracy

Education Leaders

• Led by Horace Mann– Leader in the Massachusetts Senate • Championed the creation of a State Board of Education• state legislatures across the country established boards

of education and set aside funding for public schools

• Women and Education: many women trained to become teachers in these new schools

Mental Health Reform• Dorothea Dix: used her religious ideas to lead

reforms in Mental Health and Prison Systems– Taught Sunday school in prison– Discovered that the mentally ill were being housed right

beside murders and other criminals– Visited every prison, almshouse (houses for the poor),

and hospital in Massachusetts• Dix wrote to the State legislature about what she

saw and demanded action!• Nationwide campaign where she encouraged that

hospitals be built for the mentally ill

• Her campaign led to the creation of the first modern mental hospitals– Dorothea Dix

Hospital: Raleigh, NC

Prison Reform• Dix also worked to establish more humane,

reflective prisons– Believed that prisons were not a place to punish,

but a place to rehabilitate– Debate between two prison systems:

• Pennsylvania/Eastern State: complete solitary confinement, work alone, individual yards to exercise in– Very expensive– Complete isolation was viewed as cruel

• Auburn Prison: worked with one another during the day, but in silence, individual cells – Many prisons followed this model

Temperance Movement• Reformers attributed problems within society

to the widespread use of alcohol: – Crimes, sickness, poverty, neglected families

• launched the Temperance Movement as an effort to end alcohol abuse– Temperance: moderate use of alcohol– Prohibition: complete ban of alcohol

consumption

Temperance Movement

• American Temperance Society: published pamphlets, held discussions, counseling, etc.

• Neal Dow: became mayor of Portland, Maine and passed the “Maine Law”– Restricted the sale of alcohol

Anti-Slavery & Women’s Movements

Resisting Slavery• Resist Slavery:

– Many would fight against their oppressors by breaking tools, outwitting overseers, and escaping

– Underground Railroad• Denmark Vesey: planned what would have been the

greatest slave revolt in history in Charleston, SC in 1822. – News of his plan leaked, he and his conspirators were

captured and hanged• Nat Turner: in 1831, Turner led a slave revolt in

Richmond, Virginia– Killed nearly 60 people – Stopped by a local militia, captured, and executed

Free African Americans

• Northern states began to gradually outlaw slavery in the 1840s– Result: growing population of free blacks– Continued to suffer discrimination– American Colonization Society: goal was to

encourage free blacks to return to Africa • Many were weary, considered the US their home• ACS established Liberia

Abolition

• Idea of abolishing, or prohibiting slavery– William Lloyd Garrison: printer who became a

leading abolitionist• The Liberator: abolition newspaper

– Frederick Douglass: former slave who filled lecture halls with stories of his former life in slavery

Slavery in the South

• The south continued to cling to slavery– Slavery was vital to their economy

• Many in the north fight against abolition: – Workers feared free blacks would act as

competition in the labor market• Slavery divides a nation– Debate over slavery split the nation • Widened regional differences

Women’s Movement

Cult of Domesticity

• Belief that women belonged in the home and were to take care of their home, husband, and children

• “True women” were pious, pure, domestic, and submissive to their husbands

Freedoms and Rights of Women

• Sharply limited – Lacked many basic legal and economic rights• Could not own property, vote, speak publicly, divorce,

custody of children

• New opportunities were created for women by a spark in reform.– Women became very active in reform efforts• Dorothea Dix, Sojourner Truth, Angelina & Sarah

Grimke

Women Enter the Workplace

• Thousands of women went to work in mills and factories in the North– Afforded women with a small degree of economic

independence

Fight for Rights

• published their ideas in pamphlets and books– Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the

Conditions of Women written by the Grimke sisters• Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton:

active reformers, both involved in abolition and temperance causes outraged by lack of progress in women’s rights

Seneca Falls

• 1848: Mott and Stanton organized the nation’s first Women’s Rights Convention– Seneca Falls Convention held in New York– Attended by men and women who were

advocates for women’s rights– Wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled

after the Declaration of Independence