Chapter 11: Society, Culture, and Reform 1820-1860

Question 1

Antebellum Period

Answer 1

The period before the Civil War

~A diverse mix of reformers dedicated themselves to various types of reform

Question 2

The Second Great Awakening

Answer 2

The reaction against liberalism and rationalism

~Allowed for the creation of various new churches such as the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter day Saints

Question 3

Charles Grandison Finney

Answer 3

A Presbyterian minister started a series of revivals in upstate New York
~Preached sermons based on emotions as opposed to reason
~Preached that all were free to be saved through faith and hard work

Question 4

“Burned Over District”

Answer 4

The Western New York region

~Had frequent “hell and brimstone” revivals

Question 5

Baptists and Methodists

Answer 5

Popularity for this grew in the South and on the Western frontier
~The largest Protestant denominations in the country
~Preached at outdoor revivals

Question 6

Millennialism

Answer 6

Started by the preacher William Miller on the belief that the world would end at the second coming of Christ
~Predicted that day to be October 21, 1844
~Disappointment ensued on the fact that it didn’t end
~Turned into the Seventh Day Adventists

Question 7

William Miller

Answer 7

Started the Millenialist Church

~Predicted the end of the world to be October 21, 1844

Question 8

Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints

Answer 8

Founded by Joseph Smith in 1830
~Based their religion on the Book of Mormon
~Moved from New York to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois the finally to the Great Salt Lake Basin
~Practiced polygamy

Question 9

Joseph Smith

Answer 9

Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints
~Murdered in Illinois by a mob

Question 10

Brigham Young

Answer 10

Took control of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints
~Moved them from Illinois to the Great Salt Lake Basin

Question 11

Transcendentalism

Answer 11

New wave of writing which emphasized a connection with nature
~Questioned the doctrines of established churches
~Challenged materialism in the country
~Very individualistic

Question 12

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Answer 12

The best known transcendentalist who was an author
~His essays expressed the individualistic mood of the period
~His essays and poems argued for self-reliance, independent thinking, and the primacy of spiritual matters over material ones
~He became a leading critic of slavery, and a supporter of the Union

Question 13

Henry David Thoreau

Answer 13

Another transcendentalist writer
~Lived in the same town as Emerson
~Conducted a two year experiment where he lived by himself outside town
~He used observations of nature to discover essential truths about life
~”Walden” and “On Civil Disobedience” are some of his best works

Question 14

Brook Farm

Answer 14

A community of people living with the transcendentalist ideal
~Founded by George Ripley in 1841 as an experiment in Massachusetts
~His goal was to achieve “a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, and Nathaniel Hawthorne all lived there at some point
~A bad fire and heavy debts ended it
~Brook Farm is remembered for its atmosphere of artistic creativity and an innovative school that attracted the sons and daughters of New England’s intellectually elite

Question 15

Shakers

Answer 15

One of the earliest religious communal movements
~Held property in common
~Kept women and men strictly separate forbidding and sexual relations
~They shook in the presence of God

Question 16

New Harmony

Answer 16

The secular (nonreligious) experiment in New Harmony, Indiana
~A utopian/socialist community to provide an answer to the problems of inequity and alienation caused by the Industrial Revolution
~Experiment failed due to financial problems and disagreements among members

Question 17

Robert Owen

Answer 17

Created the experiment at New Harmony, Indiana

~Welsh industrialist and reformer

Question 18

Oneida Community

Answer 18

A cooperative community that became highly controversial
~Dedicated to an ideal of perfect social and economic equality
~Members shared property
~Critics attacked the Oneida Community of planned reproduction and communal child rearing as a sinful experiment in “free love”

Question 19

John Humphrey Noyes

Answer 19

Founder of the Oneida Community

~Allowed for the Oneida Community to make money by selling silverware

Question 20

Fourier Phalanxes

Answer 20

The idea of the French socialist Charles Fourier
~The communal living areas where people shared work and living quarters
~Quickly disintegrated because Americans proved to be to individualistic

Question 21

American Temperance Society

Answer 21

Protestant ministers and others concerned with the high rate of alcohol consumption and the side effects of excessive drinking founded it
~Using moral arguments the society tried to persuade drinkers not just to moderate their drinking but to take a pledge to total alcoholic abstinence

Question 22

Dorothea Dix

Answer 22

A former school teacher from Massachusetts instigated reforms in mental hospitals
~Dedicated her life to improving conditions for the mentally disturbed

Question 23

Thomas Gallaudet

Answer 23

Founded a school for the deaf

Question 24

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe

Answer 24

Founded a school for the blind

Question 25

Horace Mann

Answer 25

A leading advocate of the public school movement
~Was secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education
~Worked for improved schools, compulsory attendance for all children, longer school year, and increased teacher preparation

Question 26

William Holmes McGuffey

Answer 26

A Pennsylvania teacher created a series of elementary textbooks
~McGuffey readers instilled the virtues of hard work, punctuality, and sobriety

Question 27

Cult of Domesticity

Answer 27

The idealized view of women as moral leaders in the home and educators of the children

Question 28

Sarah and Angelina Grimke

Answer 28

Began the women’s rights movement in America
~Objected male opposition to their antislavery activities
~Sarah wrote “Letter on the Condition of Women” and “The Equality of the Sexes”

Question 29

Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Answer 29

Another pair of women who advocated women’s rights

~This occurred after they had been barred from speaking at an antislavery convention

Question 30

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

Answer 30

The leading feminists met at Seneca Falls, New York
~The first women’s rights convention in American history
~Issued a document closely modeled after the Declaration of Independence: “Declaration of Sentiments” declared that “all men and women are created equal”

Question 31

American Colonization Society

Answer 31

Created the idea of transporting freed slaves to an African colony
~Idea appealed to politicians and racists who wanted free blacks gone
~Proved impractical because the number of slaves grew drastically
~1st African-American colony was in Monrovia, Liberia

Question 32

American Anti-Slavery Society

Answer 32

Founded by radical abolitionists to speed up the anti-slavery movement

Question 33

William Lloyd Garrison

Answer 33

Began the publication of a radical newspaper, the Liberator
~Started the radical abolitionist movement
~Advocated the immediate abolition of slavery in every state and territory without compensation to the slave owners
~Helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society
~Claimed the Constitution as a pro-slavery document

Question 34

Liberty Party

Answer 34

The split in the abolitionist movement between political action and moral action
~A group of Northerners founded it to represent the abolitionists politically
~Their political pledge was to end slavery

Question 35

American Anti-Slavery Society

Answer 35

Founded by radical abolitionists to speed up the anti-slavery movement

Question 36

William Lloyd Garrison

Answer 36

Began the publication of a radical newspaper, the Liberator
~Started the radical abolitionist movement
~Advocated the immediate abolition of slavery in every state and territory without compensation to the slave owners
~Helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society
~Claimed the Constitution as a pro-slavery document

Question 37

Liberty Party

Answer 37

The split in the abolitionist movement between political action and moral action
~A group of Northerners founded it to represent the abolitionists politically
~Their political pledge was to end slavery

Question 38

Frederick Douglass

Answer 38

A former slave who spoke about the brutality and degradation of slavery from first hand experience
~Advocated both political and direct action to end slavery and racial prejudice
~Started an antislavery journal: The North Star

Question 39

Harriet Tubman and Soujourner Truth

Answer 39

Along with William Still helped organize the effort to assist fugitive slaves escape to free territory in North and Canada
~Where slavery was prohibited
~The Underground Railroad

Question 40

David Walker

Answer 40

A Northern black who advocated the most radical solution to slavery
~Argued that slaves should take action themselves by rising up to revolt against their “masters”

Question 41

Nat Turner

Answer 41

A Virginian slave who led a revolt which killed 55 Virginians
~In retaliation whites killed hundreds of blacks in a brutal fashion and managed to put down the revolt