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Antebellum Revival and Reform C Onte Nt S Chapter Thirteen: Antebellum Revival And Reform C onte nt s 13.1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 584 13.1.1 Learning Outcomes ................................................................................. 584 13.2 RELIGIOUS REFORMS IN THE ANTEBELLUM UNITED STATES ..........................586 13.2.1 The Second Great Awakening .......................................................................586 The Second Great Awakening in the South and in Appalachia ...................................588 The Second Great Awakening in the North ............................................................. 591 The Mormons ..................................................................................................592 The Unitarian Movement ................................................................................... 592 13.2.2 Before You Move On... ................................................................................ 593 Key Concepts .................................................................................................. 593 Test Yourself ................................................................................................... 593 13.3 CULTURAL MOVEMENTS: TRANSCENDENTALISM, UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES, AND THE CULT OF DOMESTICITY .......................................................................... 594 13.3.1 Transcendentalism ..................................................................................... 594 13.3.2Utopian Communities .................................................................................595 13.3.3 The Cult of Domesticity and Separate Spheres ............................................... 597 13.3.4 Before You Move On... ................................................................................ 598 Key Concepts ................................................................................................... 598 Test Yourself ....................................................................................................599 13.4 AMERICAN ANTEBELLUM REFORM ................................................................ 600 13.4.1 The Temperance Movement ......................................................................... 600 13.4.2 Reform of Prisons, Asylums, and Schools ...................................................... 601 13.4.3 Abolitionism and the Women’s Rights Movements ........................................... 603 The Women’s Rights Movement .......................................................................... 606 13.4.4 Before You Move On... ................................................................................ 608 Key Concepts ................................................................................................... 608 Test Yourself ....................................................................................................608 13.5 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................610 13.6 CRITICAL THINKING EXERCISES .................................................................. 611 13.7KEY TERMS ................................................................................................... 612 13.8 CHRONOLOGY ...............................................................................................613 13.9ENDNOTES ...................................................................................................613 ANSWER KEY FOR CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ANTEBELLUM REVIVAL AND REFORM ..... 615 If you need this document in another format, please email the University of North Georgia Press at [email protected] or call 706-864-1556. Page | 583Page | 583 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ANTEBELLUM REVIVAL AND REFORM Chapter Thirteen: Antebellum Revival and Reform 13.1 INTRODUCTION The period between 1820 and 1860 was a time of great change in society, religion, and culture in the United States. The Second Great Awakening, a religious revival movement, saw evangelical Christianity supplant the established religious patterns of the colonial and Revolutionary eras: the Methodist and Baptist churches grew and spread. Others turned to “rational” religious denominations, such as Unitarianism. They based their religious beliefs and practices on rationalism, downplaying the miracles of scripture and concentrating instead on the morals it imparted and the historical events it recounted, arguing, “my rational nature is from God.” The mid- nineteenth century also witnessed the appearance of a number of millennial sects such as the Mormons, Shakers, and Millerites, advocating that the Second Coming of Jesus was at hand. Socially, society was in a period of great upheaval because of the changes spurred by the market revolution: increasing urbanization and industrialization, the growth of immigration, and growing inequality between classes. As a result, the reform impulse and its subsequent movements, such as abolitionism and the movement to reform prisons and asylums, were strongest in the northern United States, the area most affected by the social upheaval of the market revolution as reformers sought to impose order on a changing society. Socially and culturally, the period was also a time of experimentation. More than 100 Utopian communities sprang up all over the country. Some of these, such as the Shakers, were religious communities. Others, like Brook Farm, considered themselves to be social experiments. The antebellum period (or era before the Civil War) was a time of social and moral reform. Moral reform groups promoted temperance, or abstinence from alcohol. Others worked to make basic education available to all or sought to improve conditions in prisons and asylums. Social activists sought to end slavery and establish greater rights for women. American intellectualism and literature flowered, in part under the transcendentalist movement. Each of these movements, religious, moral, and reform, stressed a belief in the basic goodness of human nature, and in its own way, each of the movements sought to perfect humankind and society. 13.1.1 Learning Outcomes After completing this chapter, you should be able to: • Evaluate the broad social implications of the Second Great Awakening. Page | 584Page | 584 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ANTEBELLUM REVIVAL AND REFORM • Analyze the “perfectionist” tendencies of the movements of the 1820-1860 period. • Explain how the cultural movements of the nineteenth century (transcendentalism, Utopian communities, and the Cult of Domesticity) influenced American culture. • Explain how The Second Great Awakening influenced the anti-slavery movement and the women’s rights movement. Page | 585Page | 585 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ANTEBELLUM REVIVAL AND REFORM 13.2 RELIGIOUS REFORMS IN THE ANTEBELLUM UNITED STATES The years after the War of 1812 brought a re-examination of American religious beliefs and their roles in society. Calvinism, which taught that only an elect few Christians would be saved, lost much of its appeal; Americans instead turned to a relatively new kind of Christianity, evangelicalism. Evangelical sects emphasized the resurrection of Christ, the primacy of scripture, the spiritual “rebirth” of believers, and the importance of proselytizing. The movement began in Europe in the 1700s with the growth of the Baptist movement and the foundation of the Methodist church. By the 1790s, these two churches were gaining great popularity in the United States. Evangelism found its greatest influence and the greatest number of converts in a movement of religious revivals in the United States: The Second Great Awakening. 13.2.1 The Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening began in the 1790s and, by the 1820s, had emerged as a major religious movement. Evangelical in nature, it stressed that salvation was available to all through free will. Religious reformers preached that individuals were responsible to seek out their own salvation and hoped to regenerate and perfect society through individual conversions. Because it was generally inclusive of everyone, the message was spread to men and women, to rich and poor, and among slaves and free blacks alike. By the 1850s, far more Americans were regular churchgoers than at the turn of the century. The most successful denominations of the Second Great Awakening were the Methodist and Baptist churches. By the 1820s, the Methodist and Baptist churches were the largest evangelical denominations. Both were popularly-rooted movements that emphasized conversion and a spiritual rebirth through personal religious experiences. The basic message was that salvation was something anyone could achieve: ordinary people could choose salvation through personal experience and living a righteous life. Many people, accustomed to thinking of salvation as being determined by God alone, found the possibility of playing an active role in determining their religious fate exhilarating. Evangelical churches became tightly- knit communities that sought to transform society first as a force that determined and enforced values, morality, and conduct, and second, by outreach through moral reform societies that concentrated on reforming personal vices such as drinking, sexual misconduct, and gambling. Through these moral reform societies, churches hoped to change society by putting individuals on the “path to righteousness.” This reform impulse captured Page | 586Page | 586 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: ANTEBELLUM REVIVAL AND REFORM one of the Second Great Awakening’s
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