Soc, Cult, & Reform, 1790-1860

Question 1

This term refers to the United States before the Civil War.

Answer 1

Antebellum America

Question 2

Many of the significant reform movements in American history began during the 1830s. Which era is this?

Answer 2

Jacksonian Era

Question 3

Name four of the major reform movements in America that began during the Jacksonian Era.

Answer 3

1. Public schools
2. Temperance (prohibition of liquor)
3. Suffrage (equal rights for women/voting)
4. Abolitionism (abolishing slavery)

Question 4

In the 1830s, this term refers to a wave of religious enthusiasm that spread across America, where middle-class women played an important role making Americans aware that slavery was a sin.

Answer 4

The Second Great Awakening

Question 5

Which movement did the Second Great Awakening help to promote?

Answer 5

Abolitionist movement

Question 6

Revivalism (religious preaching) in New York took off by this individual appealing to people’s emotions and fears of damnation.

Answer 6

Charles G. Finney

Question 7

Upstate New York earned this nickname during the Second Great Awakening because the area was the center of religious revivalism and received many traveling evangelists.

Answer 7

“Burnt-over District” (“Hell-Fire-and-Brimstone” revival sermons)

Question 8

Preacher William Miller predicted the second coming of Christ on October 21, 1844. His disappointed followers, the Millerites, eventually became the Seventh-Day Adventists. What was this religion originally called?

Answer 8

Millennialism

Question 9

Who founded the Mormon religion?

Answer 9

Joseph Smith

Question 10

Brigham Young, Mormon leader, led a mass migration of Mormons across the Great Plains and settled in which new Mormon area?

Answer 10

Salt Lake City, Utah (Great Salt Lake)

Question 11

Which Mormon practice attracted hostility from the U.S. government?

Answer 11

Polygamy (a man could have more than one wife)

Question 12

This philosophical movement argued for discovering one’s inner self and looked for the essence of God in nature. Challenged materialism of American Society and supported the antislavery movement.

Answer 12

Transcendentalism

Question 13

This philosophical movement emphasized living a simple life and celebrating the truth found in nature and in personal emotion and imagination.

Answer 13

Transcendentalism

Question 14

Which two famous American writers followed Transcendentalism?

Answer 14

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau

Question 15

This best-known transcendentalist argued in his essays and poems for self-reliance, independent thinking, and spiritual matters of materials ones.

Answer 15

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Question 16

This Transcendentalist writer conducted a two-year experiment of living alone in the woods outside town. He observed nature to discover essential truths about life and the universe. He published his writings in a book called Walden.

Answer 16

Henry David Thoreau

Question 17

Henry David Thoreau wrote an influential essay titled, “On Civil Disobedience” which promoted which important idea that would be used by both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Answer 17

Nonviolent protest (nonviolent movements)

Question 18

This term refers to the belief that humans can create communities based upon cooperation and mutual respect. Some of these utopian communities were Brook Farm, New Harmony, and Oneida Community.

Answer 18

Perfectionism (Utopian Communities)

Question 19

This communal experiment founded by George Ripley, wanted to create a perfect union between intellectual and manual labor. Wanted to live out transcendentalist ideals. Failed, but remembered for its artistic creativity.

Answer 19

Brook Farm

Question 20

This community was founded by “Mother” Ann Lee. They held property in common and kept women and men strictly separate; no marriage or sexual relations. Failed.

Answer 20

Shakers

Question 21

This utopian community founded by Robert Owen was a secular (nonreligious) experiment. Wanted to create a utopian socialist community to solve the problems of inequity caused by the Industrial Revolution. Failed.

Answer 21

New Harmony

Question 22

This cooperative community founded by John Humphrey Noyes became controversial because members shared property and marriage partners. Failed.

Answer 22

Oneida Community

Question 23

This utopian community founded by Charles Fourier wanted to solve the problems of a competitive society and advocated that people share work and living arrangements. Failed.

Answer 23

Fourier Phalanxes

Question 24

Why did so many utopian communities fail?

Answer 24

Americans proved too individualistic to live in these communal utopias.

Question 25

Horace Greeley was a New York Tribune editor and came up with which famous quote that symbolized Manifest Destiny?

Answer 25

“Go West Young Man, Go West”

Question 26

This was a group of artists led by Thomas Cole, who painted landscapes emphasizing America’s natural beauty. First art school in America.

Answer 26

Hudson River School

Question 27

This famous American novelist wrote stories the glorified the frontiersman. He wrote The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Deerslayer.

Answer 27

James Fenimore Cooper

Question 28

The high rate of alcohol consumption in America caused factory owners and politicians to join with religious reformers because they believed prohibition could reduce crime and poverty. What is the term to describe this movement?

Answer 28

Temperance

Question 29

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union founded by Carry Nation convinced many women that they had a moral responsibility to improve society by accomplishing what?

Answer 29

Prohibition (banning alcohol)

Question 30

Which movement was led by Dorothea Dix, who worked for the better treatment of people with mental and emotional disabilities? She was not connected to the women’s rights movement.

Answer 30

Public Asylum Movement

Question 31

Horace Mann was the leader of the free school movement and worked to make school compulsory (mandatory) for all children. What does public eduction actually refer too?

Answer 31

Free (tax-supported) schools

Question 32

These were the best known schoolbooks in the 19th century that were used to teach Americans how to read. Included stories about patriotism and moral values.

Answer 32

McGuffey Readers

Question 33

This idea refers to the idealization of women in their roles as wives and mothers. This concept suggested that women would be responsible for raising their children to be virtuous citizens of the new American republic.

Answer 33

Republican Motherhood or Cult of Domesticity

Question 34

Sarah Grimke and Angelina Grimke were the first women to publicly support which two significant reform movements?

Answer 34

Abolition and Women’s Rights

Question 35

Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton strongly supported which two reform movements?

Answer 35

Abolition and Women’s Rights

Question 36

In 1848, leading feminists held the first women’s rights convention in American history. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony led the campaign for equal voting and property rights.

Answer 36

Seneca Falls Convention (1848)

Question 37

The women’s rights movement during the 1830-1840s would become overshadowed by what other controversial issue?

Answer 37

Slavery

Question 38

What is another term used to describe the antislavery movement?

Answer 38

Abolitionism

Question 39

William Lloyd Garrison founded this antislavery newspaper that began the radical abolitionist movement. He called for “immediate and uncompensated emancipation of slaves.”

Answer 39

The Liberator (1831)

Question 40

The purpose of this group was to promote the idea of transporting freed slaves to an African colony. Was not successful and opposed slavery on the basis of removing blacks from white society.

Answer 40

American Colonization Society (1817)

Question 41

This political party of northerners wanted to end slavery by political and legal means.

Answer 41

Liberty Party

Question 42

Who were the most outspoken and convincing critics of slavery.

Answer 42

Black Abolitionists (escaped slaves and free blacks)

Question 43

This former slave spoke about the brutality and degradation of slavery from firsthand experience and started the antislavery journal, The North Star. He also championed equal rights for women and Native Americans.

Answer 43

Frederick Douglass

Question 44

An example of violent abolitionism is when this slave led a revolt in Virginia in 1831, but would only result in stricter black codes and southern actions became more severe.

Answer 44

Nat Turner (1831)

Question 45

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian, visited America and observed American democracy during the Jacksonian Era. He wrote about its strengths and weaknesses in what book?

Answer 45

Democracy in America