Expansion & Reform: SOCIETY

Question 1

While the First Great Awakening focused primarily on those who already went to church regularly, at which group was the Second Great Awakening directed?

Answer 1

The Second Great Awakening was directed at the unchurched and consisted of revival meetings about conversion to Christianity. Preachers such as Peter Cartwright held their revival meetings outdoors in large tents instead of in churches.

Question 2

Upstate New York was known as “The Burned Over District.” Why?

Answer 2

Upstate New York saw large numbers of revival meetings, where ministers such as Charles J. Finney converted many by preaching about the “fire and brimstone” that awaited non-believers in hell, hence the name “Burned Over District.”

Upstate New York also saw the birth of new Christian sects including Seventh Day Adventism and Mormonism.

Question 3

Who were the Millerites?

Answer 3

The Millerites, located primarily in New York, were followers of William Miller, who predicted that Christ would return to Earth sometime between 1843 and 1844. Although Christ did not appear (an event known as “The Great Disappointment”), the heartbroken Millerites founded their own Christian sect, now known as Seventh Day Adventism.

Question 4

Another religion begun in upstate New York was Mormonism, founded by ________ ________.

Answer 4

Joseph Smith

Smith claimed to have found golden plates containing a third Testament (in addition to the Old and New Testaments), under the direction of the angel Moroni.

Question 5

Although Mormonism began in upstate New York, most Mormons ended up settling in Utah. Why?

Answer 5

Mormonism, especially the Mormon practice of polygamy, evoked great hostility. Mormons were driven from New York to Missouri and then to Illinois, where Joseph Smith was killed. Brigham Young led the Mormons to Utah, where it was hoped that their isolated location in the Utah desert would provide some degree of protection.

Question 6

What was the Second Great Awakening’s impact on the South?

Answer 6

The Second Great Awakening had a very minimal impact on the South; it was almost solely a Northern phenomenon.

Question 7

What did the Shakers believe about relationships between the sexes?

Answer 7

The Shakers were a religious group that grew significantly during the Second Great Awakening, and believed in equality of the sexes. They preached complete celibacy, and relied on conversion for new members of their sect.

Question 8

Define:

Transcendentalism

Answer 8

Transcendentalism was a philosophical movement that reached its peak in the 1830s and 1840s. Transcendentalists contended that mankind was basically good, and that organized religion and political parties were detrimental to individualism.

Transcendentalists argued that when individual people were self-reliant, they could be at their best, and from such self-reliant people ideal communities could be formed.

Question 9

_______ _______ _______, the author of Nature and Self-Reliance, argued in favor of individualism and contended that America should develop its own literary style and culture distinct from Europe.

Answer 9

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson is considered one of the founders of Transcendentalism, and was an extremely popular lecturer from the 1830s onward. Emerson influenced writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.

Question 10

Written by Henry David Thoreau, what did Walden chronicle?

Answer 10

Walden is a record of Henry David Thoreau’s experience living by himself in a small cabin on Walden Pond. More than a mere autobiography, in Walden, Thoreau describes his attempts to use his observations about the natural world to discover essential truths about life.

Question 11

Define:

Utopia

Answer 11

Utopia is a state of perfect society on Earth.

During the 1840s, there were several attempts to create utopian communes, including Brook Farm (where Nathaniel Hawthorne resided for a short period), the Oneida Community in New York, and Iowa’s Amana Community.

Question 12

What did Thoreau argue in his essay Civil Disobedience?

Answer 12

Thoreau contended that individuals have a duty to disobey when the government enacts laws that violate one’s conscience.

Thoreau was primarily motivated by the injustice of slavery and his own opposition to the Mexican-American War. Civil Disobedience influenced figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Question 13

The Oneida Community, founded in 1848, lasted for decades, but was roundly condemned by most Americans. Why?

Answer 13

The Oneida Community was a commune in upstate New York. Oneidans believed that children should be raised by the community, rather than by individual parents. The Oneida Community’s practice of open marriages (the sharing of marital partners with other members of the community) and free love were considered scandalous.

Charles Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, lived in the Oneida Community for a time, but proved unpopular. While there, he was known as “Charles Get-Out,” due to the usual response to his attempts to find a romantic partner.

Question 14

What was the subject of George Caleb Bingham’s most stirring paintings?

Answer 14

Bingham specialized in painting the Frontier, and his most famous paintings are of evocative scenes of the lives of fur traders and pioneers, and of political activities in rural areas.

Question 15

Instead of paintings of American Revolutionary scenes, or commissioned portraits, what did painters of the Hudson River School typically depict?

Answer 15

The Hudson River School artists primarily painted nature and wilderness scenes of the Hudson River Valley and the nearby Adirondack and Catskill Mountains. Artists such as Thomas Cole and Frederick Church specialized in depicting the grandeur of nature.

Question 16

Who was John James Audubon?

Answer 16

Audubon was a French-American ornithologist and painter who specialized in illustrating birds. Audubon’s The Birds of America was the result of years of painstaking labor to draw, in color, every bird in the United States.

Only 120 first-edition copies of The Birds of America exist, and they sell for millions.

Question 17

Noah Webster’s _______ _______ ________ was used as the authoritative text to teach spelling to children in American schools beginning in the early 1800s.

Answer 17

Blue Backed Speller

Webster, who also published the first American dictionary, used the Blue Backed Speller to standardize American education and to separate it from English education.

He also attempted to introduce new spelling into American writing, and while dropping the “u” from “colour” caught on, spelling tongue “tung” never did.

Question 18

Who wrote The Scarlet Letter?

Answer 18

Nathaniel Hawthorne

In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne condemned Puritan bigotry in Massachusetts.

Question 19

In what style of writing did Edgar Allen Poe specialize?

Answer 19

Poe specialized in depicting the macabre, dark stories of crime and murder that were designed to thrill his audience.

Question 20

Herman Melville’s works, such as Moby Dick, Billy Budd, and Typee, criticize what American characteristic of the pre-Civil War period?

Answer 20

Melville criticized American optimism. Unlike the Transcendentalists, Melville’s writings convey a belief in original sin and that man was inherently imperfect.

Question 21

Who was America’s first popular writer?

Answer 21

Washington Irving

Irving specialized in short stories, such as the Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle, and gained a large audience on both sides of the Atlantic.

Irving was one of the first writers to write with the avowed purpose of entertainment, rather than to inform his audience.

Question 22

Beginning shortly after the Revolutionary War, American architects drew inspiration from the buildings of the ancient world. What was this architectural movement called?

Answer 22

Greek Revival

American architects began featuring Greek columns, porticos, and marble in a style known as Greek Revival.

The White House, with its Greek columns and porticoed entrance, is an example of Greek Revival architecture.

Question 23

Define:

Temperance

Answer 23

Temperence refers to a total abstention from alcohol.

Founded in the 1820s, the American Temperance Society equated alcohol with sin, and argued for its complete ban.

Question 24

Which state banned liquor in 1851?

Answer 24

Maine

Although 13 other states followed Maine’s lead, the temperance movement was largely overshadowed by the crusade against slavery.

Question 25

Which two immigrant groups opposed the efforts of the temperance movement?

Answer 25

The Germans and the Irish. They viewed the temperance movement as anti-immigrant, and resented efforts to ban wine and liquor.

Question 26

To what cause did Dorothea Dix dedicate her life?

Answer 26

Dix dedicated herself to reforming treatment of the mentally ill. Dix advocated for human treatment and separate asylums (the insane were typically housed with criminals prior to her efforts).

Question 27

What prominent prison reform took place during the antebellum period?

Answer 27

The most prominent prison reform was a change in focus from punishment of the criminal to rehabilitation. The first prison focused on reform was Auburn, built in New York in 1821.

Question 28

How did newly arrived Catholic immigrants, such as the Irish and Germans, respond to efforts to establish free public schools?

Answer 28

Concerned that the free public schools started by reformers such as Horace Mann would be used to proselytize their children with anti-Catholic teachings, German and Irish Catholics created their own schools.

Question 29

In addition to Noah Webster’s Blue Backed Speller, what text did the free public schools adopt as they began to spread in the 1840s?

Answer 29

McGuffey’s Reader

McGuffey’s Reader contained lessons designed to emphasize values such as hard work and punctuality, and attempted to instill social, “American” values in young people.

Question 30

What was the first institute of higher learning to admit women?

Answer 30

Oberlin College

Higher education for women was still unusual. Those women who learned more than mere reading and writing were typically upper class, and attended institutions that specialized in teaching social graces, rather than significant higher education.

Oberlin College was founded in 1833.

Question 31

Define:

Republican Motherhood

Answer 31

Republican Motherhood stressed educating women with American democratic principles, so that those principles could be passed on to the next generation of Americans.

Question 32

What was the Lowell System?

Answer 32

The Lowell System provided employment for thousands of women in the factory towns of Massachusetts. Women from nearby farms lived in factory dormitories for short periods, working long hours in miserable conditions to earn enough for a dowry or to help their families.

Question 33

Although factories using the Lowell System provided employment to some women, where did most women who worked outside the home find employment during the Antebellum Period?

Answer 33

Women were most often employed either as teachers, or as domestic servants. Following marriage, it was expected that a woman would cease having any profession at all.

Question 34

What was the cult of domesticity?

Answer 34

The cult of domesticity, prominent throughout much of the 19th century, held that women were the moral leaders of the home, and that it was women’s role to ensure children were raised to follow democratic principles and to provide a quiet and relaxing environment for their husbands, separate from the sphere of industry.

Question 35

Who called the Seneca Falls Convention?

Answer 35

The Seneca Falls Convention, the first organized women’s rights conference, was called in 1848 by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Every prominent women’s rights advocate (and quite a few men) attended.

Question 36

What did the Seneca Falls Convention propose?

Answer 36

Prominent feminists, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, proposed equality for women, including legal, property, and voting rights. Though the Seneca Falls Convention and the women’s movement were overshadowed by abolitionism, the Convention marked the beginning of the women’s rights movement.

Question 37

How did the American Colonization Society propose to solve the issue of slavery?

Answer 37

The American Colonization Society suggested that the government purchase slaves and have them transported back to Africa.

The country of Liberia, Africa was founded by the American Colonization Society. Although men such as Lincoln supported the idea, it never caught on and only 12,000 blacks returned to Africa.

Question 38

Who founded The Liberator, the first radical abolitionist newspaper, in 1833?

Answer 38

William Lloyd Garrison

Taking inspiration from Thoreau, Garrison declared “that which is not just is not law.”

Question 39

What organization was the first radical abolitionist group in the United States?

Answer 39

The American Anti-Slavery Society

Based in New York City and founded by William Lloyd Garrison in 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society demanded the immediate abolition of slavery.

The American Anti-Slavery Society issued pamphlets, petitions to Congress, and sponsored speeches, including many by Frederick Douglass.

Question 40

What was the goal of the Liberty Party which ran James G. Birney for President in 1840?

Answer 40

The Liberty Party wanted to use the political process to end the institution of slavery. Although the party never received many votes, its mere existence was an irritant to the South.

Question 41

In 1831, _______ ______ led a band of slaves in a revolt in Virginia.

Answer 41

Nat Turner

Turner and his followers killed some 50-60 whites before being put down by state militia. His actions exacerbated fears of further slave rebellions and ended all discussion of slavery reform within the South.

Question 42

Define:

The Underground Railroad

Answer 42

The Underground Railroad, directed by opponents to slavery such as Sojourner Truth, was a network that guided escaped slaves along secret routes and to safe houses until they reached freedom.