Chapter 11: Society, Culture, and Reform 1820-1860 Flashcards
Antebellum Period
The period before the Civil War
~A diverse mix of reformers dedicated themselves to various types of reform
The Second Great Awakening
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
Charles Grandison Finney
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
“Burned Over District”
The Western New York region
~Had frequent “hell and brimstone” revivals
Baptists and Methodists
Popularity for this grew in the South and on the Western frontier
~The largest Protestant denominations in the country
~Preached at outdoor revivals
Millennialism
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
William Miller
Started the Millenialist Church
~Predicted the end of the world to be October 21, 1844
Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints
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
Joseph Smith
Founder of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints
~Murdered in Illinois by a mob
Brigham Young
Took control of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints
~Moved them from Illinois to the Great Salt Lake Basin
Transcendentalism
New wave of writing which emphasized a connection with nature
~Questioned the doctrines of established churches
~Challenged materialism in the country
~Very individualistic
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
Henry David Thoreau
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
Brook Farm
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
Shakers
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
New Harmony
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
Robert Owen
Created the experiment at New Harmony, Indiana
~Welsh industrialist and reformer
Oneida Community
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”
John Humphrey Noyes
Founder of the Oneida Community
~Allowed for the Oneida Community to make money by selling silverware
Fourier Phalanxes
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
American Temperance Society
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
Dorothea Dix
A former school teacher from Massachusetts instigated reforms in mental hospitals
~Dedicated her life to improving conditions for the mentally disturbed
Thomas Gallaudet
Founded a school for the deaf
Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe
Founded a school for the blind
Horace Mann
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
William Holmes McGuffey
A Pennsylvania teacher created a series of elementary textbooks
~McGuffey readers instilled the virtues of hard work, punctuality, and sobriety
Cult of Domesticity
The idealized view of women as moral leaders in the home and educators of the children
Sarah and Angelina Grimke
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”
Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Another pair of women who advocated women’s rights
~This occurred after they had been barred from speaking at an antislavery convention
Seneca Falls Convention (1848)
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”
American Colonization Society
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
American Anti-Slavery Society
Founded by radical abolitionists to speed up the anti-slavery movement
William Lloyd Garrison
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
Liberty Party
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
American Anti-Slavery Society
Founded by radical abolitionists to speed up the anti-slavery movement
William Lloyd Garrison
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
Liberty Party
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
Frederick Douglass
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
Harriet Tubman and Soujourner Truth
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
David Walker
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”
Nat Turner
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
