The Second and Antebellum Reform

Four factors (market revolution, religious revival, sentimentalism, and faith in progress) combined to produce the explosion of reform energies and projects in the Jacksonian Era (1820s- 1840s). The market revolution and the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening combined to promote the idea of the individual as an economic and moral free agent primarily responsible for his or her own material and spiritual well-being. Even as American reformers attempted to make sense of the new individualistic, contractual relations that defined the market society, they embraced the Second Great Awakening’s emphasis on the individual’s central role in securing his or her own salvation. The growth of sentimentalism and the faith in progress combined to generate , the belief that reformers could usher in a period of social justice that would prepare the way for the second coming of Christ. Thus reform energies focused on preparing individuals to take control of the economic and spiritual lives (temperance and self-discipline) while at the same time trying to stamp out forms of social injustice (abolition and improving care for the outcast).1

The religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening emphasized the individual’s direct responsibility for his or her spiritual life and eventual salvation. An indication of the impact of these religious teachings can be glimpsed in Peter Cartwright’s account of his religious conversion. After a day of dissipation and carousing, Cartwright began “to reflect on the manner in which I had spent the day and evening. I felt guilty and condemned.” Cartwright recalled that “an awful impression rested on my mind that death had come and I was unprepared to die. I fell on my knees and began to ask God to have mercy on me.” With the help of his family and evangelical preaching, Cartwright resolved to transform his personal life and dedicate himself to the conversion of others.2

The message of the Second Great Awakening proved particularly explosive in areas experiencing the market revolution. Upper State along the Erie Canal, for example, became known as “the burnt over district” in reference to the wave of revivals that swept over the area. As revivals generated movements for both personal and social reform, temperance exemplified the intersection of religious and economic free agency. Temperance not only led to a more Christian life, but promised economic well-being as well. Temperance reformers thus rejoiced at the fine symbolism of grocers who poured their whiskey into the Erie Canal. Drunkeness, reformers warned, was the most “formidable enemy” to “the spirit of industry and economy,” threatening the “loss of property and credit.” Temperance, on the other hand, promoted “the spirit of industry and frugality, in relation to the individual and his family.”3

1 Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman and Jon Gjerde, eds., Major Problems in American History (Boston: D.C. Heath, 2002), the four factors examined on 260-261. 2 Selections from Cartwright’s Autobiography reproduced in Hoffman and Gjerde, Major Problems, 262-263. 3 Address of temperance reformer Thomas Grimke reproduced in Hoffman and Gjerde, Major Problems, 269-270; on the intersection of religious revival and market transformation, see Paul E. Johnson, “Religious Reform as a Form of Social Control,” in Hoffman and Gjerde, Major Problems, 275-285, especially 276. Temperance and other reform movements understood personal transformation as only the starting point for social transformation. The most famous of all, Charles Finney, told his converts that “if they were united all over the world, the Millennium might be brought about in three months.” Finney and other evangelicals believed that Christian reformers would establish a thousand-year reign of peace and justice on earth at the end of which Christ would return. Therefore, evangelical communities resolved “to make it the business of our life to do good” and “to glorify God and built up the Redeemer’s Kingdom in this fallen world....” The growth of sentimentalism and the belief in progress re-enforced these convictions, generating sympathy of the poor and outcaste and a determination to improve their lives. Thus Dorothea Dix petitioned the Massachusetts legislature to improve “the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast,” those “beings wretched in our prisons, and more wretched in our almshouses....”4

In market towns like Rochester, New York, economic leaders used religious revival and social reform to discipline their employees and transform working-class culture. In the wake of Theodore Weld’s impassioned call for absolute temperance, evangelized economic leaders not only campaigned against liquor sellers in the city but closed down major working-class amusements including a theater and a circus. Simultaneously economic leaders established new free churches for the poor, contributed monies to existing working-class churches, and invited the most respectable workers into their own churches. They also established a savings bank to encourage thrift among their employees and a Female Charitable Society that distributed alms to the “worthy” poor. Their efforts resulted in a dramatic increase in church membership among workers.5

Rochester’s workers joined middle-class churches in droves. Forty-two percent of new members in middle-class churches in the mid-1830s were journeymen craftsmen. This was not simply a matter of the more disciplined and self–respecting workers embracing middle-class morality. Indeed, the most self-respecting and well-educated workers in the city were often radicals who avoid church and instead read avidly, debated aggressively, and conducted strikes for the ten-hour day. Sometimes family ties and the egalitarian content of much of revivalist preaching pulled workers into middle-class congregations. But more than anything else, the coercive power of employers and lenders brought workers into the middle-class orbit. Tee- totaling, church-going craftsmen found it much easier to secure employer and credit than did those who resisted middle-class strictures.6

The thrust of the revivalism and reform also took more egalitarian forms. The emphasis on individual free agency, moral and economic, cast a critical light on institutions and practices that denied individual freedom. The denial of individual opportunity for improvement was central to David Walker’s criticism of . Slavery, the free black man wrote in 1829, had “kept us ignorant of Him and His Divine worship.” African-Americans of “talents and learning” had not been given “a chance to develop, in consequence of oppression.” Walker added that “our

4 Johnson, “Religious Reform,” Finney quoted on 276; Rochester’s evangelical Brick Church quoted on 276-277; Dorothea Dix’s petition reproduced in Hoffman and Gjerde, Major Problems, 273. 5 Johnson, “Religious Reform,” 278-282. 6 Johnson, “Religious Reform,” 280-285. oppression ought not to hinder us from acquiring all we can.” White abolitionists also made the denial of spiritual freedom central to their indictment of slavery.7

The women’s rights movement also appropriated the idea of moral and economic free agency in crafting their demands. Women also seized upon the enthusiasm for social reform in expanding their sphere of action. “Surrendering to calm and deep convictions of duty my habitual views of what is womanly and becoming,” Dix entered the public and political realm to petition the Massachusetts legislature. She beseeched the legislators to, for once, “put away the cold, calculating spirit of selfishness and self-seeking,” the “armor of local strife and political opposition,” the “earthly and perishable,” and attend to “works of righteousness and just judgment.” Thus women like Dix insisted on applying traditionally female qualities of care and compassion to the world at large.8

As Dix’s petition suggests, reformers could also take issue with market values and market principles even as they acquired energy from the market revolution. Thus Ralph Waldo Emerson’s praise of “Man the Reformer” included criticism of the “practical impediments that stand in the way of virtuous young men.” The “ways of trade,” Emerson charged, “are grown selfish to the borders of theft” and “vitiated by derelictions and abuses at which all connive....” Selfish market egoism, Emerson added, forced the individual into “the harness of routine and obsequiousness” and left us all to “eat and drink and wear perjury and fraud in a hundred commodities....” Responding to such charges, Emerson’s associates established an experiment in communal living at Brook Farm. The Brook Farm group, as Elizabeth Peabody explained, believed that in “order to live a religious and moral life worthy of the name” they must “come out in some degree from the world” to form a new community and new economy “to exclude competition and the ordinary rules of trade.” They proposed to share physical and intellectual labor, to reward all at the same rate of pay, and to insure that “means will be given to all for intellectual improvement and for social intercourse, calculated to refine and expand.” They hoped to provide “not only all the necessaries, but all the elegances desirable for bodily and for spiritual health: books, apparatus, collections for science, works of art, means of beautiful amusement.” Making such things “common to all,” they hoped to dampen “the passion for individual accumulation” so that “whenever the sordid passion appears, it will be seen in its naked selfishness.”9

Religious revivals contributed to the democratization of American life. The explosive growth of the Methodist and Baptist churches, and of popular religious movements and “untutored” preaching generally, reflected the decline of established and hierarchical churches in the wake of the . The questioning of authority and the popular confidence in the ability of people to think for themselves that was both cause and consequence of the American Revolution also remade religious life. The evangelical call for revival reinforced the new emphasis on popular sovereignty to demolish traditional forms of religious authority and

7 Selections from David Walker’s Appeal reproduced in Hoffman and Gjerde, Major Problems, 266-268. 8 Dix’s petition reproduced in Hoffman and Gjerde, Major Problems, 272-274. 9 Selections from Emerson’s “Man the Reformer” and Elizabeth Peabody’s account of Brook Farm reproduced in Hoffman and Gjerde, Major Problems, 270-272. empower itinerant preachers and the camp meetings that served. Those who attended the revivals demanded plain-speaking, unpretentious preachers, down-to-earth doctrines, and locally-controlled, participatory services (with plenty of music). Deference to theological authorities and exclusion of the uneducated was out; respect for popular intuition and emotion was in. Religious authorities might insist that “No person is warranted from the world of God to publish to the world the discoveries of heaven or hell which he supposes he has had in a dream, or trance, or vision.” But democratic Christians insisted that “I also know, that both sleeping and waking, things of a divine nature have been revealed to me.”10

But in the end, religious revival and social reform did more to support and extend an individualistic and competitive market society than to undermine it. The Jacksonian assault on economic and political privilege stopped tragically short of developing positive programs aimed at promoting social equality and social justice. The assault upon cultural privilege (both the established church and the middle-class reform movements) also stopped short of developing positive cultural and spiritual programs. As democrats rejected the privileges and vested interest of elites and sought a millennium of equality and justice, they could find no better guarantee of the common good than the individual pursuit of well-being, whether spiritual or worldly. With the discrediting and collapse of a traditional order that combined elite interests with at least some concern for social and moral order and the public good, competition and self-interest stood ready to take over. With the cooling of reform and millennial energies in the 1840s, little stood in the way of amoral entrepreneurs and little remained for the lower orders but to struggle toward middle-class respectability.11

10 Nathan O. Hatch, “Religious Revivalism as a Form of Democratization,” in Hoffman and Gjerde, Major Problems, 285-293. 11 Hatch, “Religious Revivalism as a Form of Democratization,” 291-293.