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SNEAK PREVIEW For more information on adopting this title for your course, please contact us at: [email protected] or 800-200-3908 PROBLEMS IN U.S. HISTORY SECOND EDITION PROBLEMS IN U.S. HISTORY Edited by Jim Cook | California State University – Stanislaus Carrie Montoya, Manager, Revisions and Author Care Kaela Martin, Project Editor Emely Villavicencio, Senior Graphic Designer Alexa Lucido, Licensing Supervisor Allie Kiekhofer, Interior Designer Natalie Piccotti, Director of Marketing Kassie Graves, Vice President of Editorial Jamie Giganti, Director of Academic Publishing Copyright © 2019 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. For inquiries regarding permissions, translations, foreign rights, audio rights, and any other forms of reproduction, please contact the Cognella Licensing Department at [email protected]. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image: Copyright © 2015 iStockphoto LP/WaffOzzy. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-5165-3845-4 (pbk)/ 978-1-5165-3846-1 (br) CONTENTS 1 | The Columbian Exchange 1 from Food in World History BY JEFFREY PILCHER 2 | A Short History of the Puritans 11 from Saints, Sinners, and the God of the World BY ANDREW MALLORY 3 | Native Americans and the Problem of History, Part I 25 from History’s Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century BY STEVEN CONN 4 | Counter Reconstruction 63 from Reconstruction after the Civil War BY JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN AND MICHAEL W. FITZGERALD 5 | Death at the Machine: Critiques of Industrial Capitalism in the Fiction of Labor Activist Lizzy Holmes 77 BY RUTH PERCY 6 | The Second Great Awakening and the Myth of the Stone-Campbell Movement 105 from The Myth of the Stone-Campbell Movement BY JIM COOK 7 | Worrisome Changes in U.S. Labor Force and Employment since 2007 119 BY ROBERT RIGGS 8 | If Corporations Are Not People, What Are They? 127 from Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy from Big Money and Global Corporations BY JEFFREY CLEMENTS CHAPTER SIX The Second Great Awakening and the Myth of the Stone-Campbell Movement FROM The Myth of the Stone-Campbell Movement BY JIM COOK INTRODUCTION1 BY JIM COOK The Stone-Campbell Movement was created in 1832 when Barton Stone’s “Christ-ians” from the West merged with Alexander Campbell’s “Reforming Baptists.” By the beginning of the Civil War it was the sixth-largest religious movement in the United States. In the twentieth century the movement split into three main branches that exist today. In recent years, scholars from these branches have worked to better understand their nineteenth- century roots. A historical subfield often called “restoration history” has emerged in which historians and other scholars debate the influence of Stone and Campbell on specific characteristics of the existing branches. Of special note is Leroy Garret’s seminal study titled The Stone-Campbell Movement.1 My book uses the writings of both Stone and Campbell to show that Stone was never a viable leader of the movement after 1832, and his ideas were never part of what influenced the twentieth-century branches of the movement. The debates going on between “restoration historians” are thus predicated on the false assumption that Stone influenced people within the movements. The evidence presented in this book proves that Stone was an outsider in the movement that bears his name. It furthermore provides evidence that Stone’s broad and inclusive view of Christianity was an influence on another 1 Text in this piece originally appeared in Jim Cook, The Myth of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Copyright © 2007 by Jim Cook. Entire book will be published in 2019 by Lexington Press. 105 106 | Problems in U.S. History group called the Christian Connexion which partly grew out of Stoneite churches that openly rejected the 1832 union with Campbell. *** The first half of the nineteenth cen- Edwards’s revival—Old Lights versus tury was in many ways a golden age for New Lights—would melt away. More Protestant Christianity in the United than anything else, Christian unity was States. Christian movements flourished the ideal that drove the Second Great to a degree never before seen. People ex- Awakening. perimented with their religious convic- In 1832, two Christian movements tions in unique ways, from the utopian came together in an attempt to practice perfectionism of Shakers to the tran- this ideal Christian unity. One was led by scendentalism of Emerson. Historians Barton Stone, a preacher from the west- refer to the period as the Second Great ern regions and leader of the Cane Ridge Awakening in that it was a religious Revivals. The other was led by Alexander awakening that followed the one that Campbell, a prolific writer and Christian occurred in eighteenth-century colonial leader who had caused much controversy America, led by Jonathan Edwards. among the Baptists. United, the “Stone- The two “awakenings” were divided Campbell Movement” became an impor- by the American Revolution and its tant part of American Christianity. The immediate aftermath. It is tempting to main purpose of this study is to present see them as one phenomenon, at least evidence that Stone was never a leader in until their very different motivations the movement and was not an influence are understood. Edwards’s awakening on those who moved it in the direction was an attempt to revive a purer form it went after the Civil War. Furthermore, of Calvinism, while the nineteenth- if Stone was never a leader in the move- century awakening was an attempt to ment that bears his name, then the discredit Calvinism altogether. Mixed “Stone-Campbell Movement” is a myth with this anti-Calvinist fervor at the of sorts, and Stone’s legacy lies elsewhere. beginning of the nineteenth century was The word “myth” is not used here in the a belief in republicanism, the equality of traditional sense of a story used to ex- all Christians, and a burning desire to plain the origins of a culture or religion. restore the true church. This restoration Here, we mean “myth” in a modern sense would, of necessity, bring all Christians as an erroneous understanding or percep- together. All the distinctions that had tion. Stone’s role in the Stone-Campbell developed over time would cease to Movement, understood as it is by most divide the one true Church of Christ. historians today, is just such an erroneous Even the divisions that developed during understanding or perception. The Second Great Awakening and the Myth of the Stone-Campbell Movement | 107 The first order of business in clearing strictly hierarchal denominations lost up such a myth is to understand the the attention of the people to itinerant unique American environment that preachers who roamed the cities and gave birth to Christian movements like countryside, proposing a democratic Stone’s and Campbell’s. The two decades approach to Christianity.3 Within this after the American Revolution were radical revolution in American churches, ones of tremendous idealism mixed with primitivism and restorationism began to a nagging insecurity. Everyone wanted flourish, based on the belief that this was to believe that a republican government the time set aside by God to bring back could really work, but the evidence did or restore the original church. These not always support that belief. Many newly radical American Christians be- citizens of the new American republic lieved that the true church had virtually turned to their religion to justify their disappeared during the long centuries new republican values. They started of apostasy. The reforms of Wycliffe to see Christianity as a way to prove and Luther had failed to restore it.4 The that republicanism worked. The added job before them now was to tear down benefit of such an approach was the these tightly structured denominations way it undermined the centralized and replace them with one universal authority that was an essential part of “Catholic” church as it existed in the Protestantism. Thus, it is possible to say first century. that in America after the revolution, This was not a new idea. The Christianity had a French Revolution. Puritans in the seventeenth century The patriotic church-goers did not revolt had advocated a particular version of according to the conservative American this primitivist-restorationist ideal. model but rather according to the radi- Indeed, it was not a new idea even for cal French model. American churches them. As historian Theodore Bozeman tapped into a new democratic urge that points out, most Christian views are changed them permanently. The effect primitivistic because they reach back was electrifying. It was felt even in old to a pure beginning. The Puritans who Europe, where France’s revolution trans- came to America starting around 1620 formed European societies.2 In America, were simply the next link in a chain of ordained ministers functioning within primitivist-restorationist ideologies that had always guided Christianity through 2 Sidney E. Ahlstrom, “Religion, Revolution, its many phases. According to Bozeman, and the Rise of Modern Nationalism: Reflections the Puritans’ unique contribution was on the American Experience,” in American Church History: A Reader, Henry W. Bowden and P.C. Kemeny, eds. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 3 Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization 24–36. Ahlstrom’s essay stresses the impact that of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale the American and French Revolutions had on all University Press, 1989), 5.