Interpreters of the Divine and the
Human Condition
American Thoughts and Thinkers, 1800-1860
Unitarianism/Universalism
Rational religion Rejection of Orthodox
Calvinism Unitarianism—man
was too good to damn; Universalists—God was too good to damn
Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of man, neighborhood of Boston
Evangelicalism Academics tend to focus on the
Universalists and Unitarians, many of whom were in the forefront of reform movements
The dominant U. S. religion was Evangelical Protestantism, which rejected rigid Calvinism
Emphasized reality of sin, redemption, heaven, hell, and personal responsibility for seeking and responding to salvation.
2d Great Awakening Began as a reaction to both rational
religion and apostasy Cain Ridge Revivals in Kentucky “Burned Over District” in Upstate NY New Religions—LDS Church
Cain Ridge Revivals Response to rural isolation and lack of
ecclesiastical structures on the Frontier
Further emergence of low-church Protestantism
Democratization of Christianity
Peter Cartwright (1785-1873) “And who is General Jackson; if General Jackson don’t get his soul converted, God will damn him as soon as anyone else.”
“Burned Over District” Charles Grandison
Finney “I have a retainer from
the Lord to plead his cause; I cannot plead yours”
New Methods of Evangelicalism
Religious Values supported Market Revolution
LDS CHURCH Crucible of Burned Over
district Discovery of the
Tablets Converts by the
Thousands, especially among women
Persecuted by majority protestants in Palmyra, Kirtland, and Nauvoo
Smith murdered in 1844
Significance of 2d Great Awakening
Spawned Reform Movements (Temperance, Abolitionism) and Methods (Moral Suasion
Created a secular, political rhetoric Huge growth in Church membership;
especially among protestants Protestant-based religious bigotry
becomes U. S. norm
Romanticism and Transcendentalism
Reaction to the mechanistic world view of the enlightenment
U. S. version of anti-enlightenment was “transcendentalism”—focusing on the presumed true but improvable and one’s inner light
Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller were key exponents
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
American Scholar (1837)
Self Reliance (1841)
“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
“If an man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer
Walden Civil Disobedience
Margaret Fuller (1810-1815)
Editor of the Dial Author of Woman in the 19th
Century “What woman needs is
not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely, and unimpeded to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our common home.”
Belles Lettres Americanae
Nathaniel Hawthorne—Scarlet Letter Emily Dickinson—1800 poems Washington Irving—Knickerbocker’s . .
. History of New York James Fenimore Cooper--Leather
Stocking Tales Herman Melville—Moby Dick Walt Whitman—Leaves of Grass
Newspapers Richard Hoe’s Rotary Press New York Evening Post—William
Cullen Bryant New York Tribune—Horace Greeley New York Times—Henry J. Raymond
Ferment of Reform Public Education—Horace Mann &
Calvin Wiley Temperance Prison Reform—Dorothea Dix
Women’s Rights Reaction to
Domestic Sphere and to dependency on men for legal protection and political participation
Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Seneca Falls ConventionThe history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men--both natives and foreigners.
Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
Utopian Societies Shakers—Mother Ann Lee Oneida Community—John Humphrey
Noyes New Harmony—Robert Dale Owen Brook Farm—George Ripley
What might this all mean?
Reaction to myriad changes unleashed by Market Revolution
Desire to understand one’s place in the cosmos
Desire to tame “mankind” the way that machines were taming nature.