Second Great Awakening

1. Second Great Awakening

2. Beginnings of an Awakening • Early 1700s: Great Awakening • Beginning in the early 1800s • Second Great Awakening

3. Charles Grandison Finney • One of the most influential “revivalists” of the Second Great Awakening • Revivalists: traveling preachers who wanted to revive the role of religion in America • Gave passionate sermons

4. African American Religion • -welcomed African Americans • -establish their own revivals and churches • African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816) • Led by Richard Allen • Religion offered promise of eternal freedom after a life of oppression

5. New Religious Groups Form • Mormons: led by Joseph Smith • spoke and wrote of visions that led him to creating this new religious group • Organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830 • Grew rapidly • Unitarians: belief that the trinity should be seen as a single divine being • Began in New England from Puritan churches

7. Religious Discrimination • Mormons: • Americans were weary of the Mormon church because they had isolated themselves • Some of their practices were frowned upon by society • Were chased away from their communities • Sought refuge in other states: Illinois, city of Nauvoo • Joseph Smith killed by an angry mob of non-Mormons in Illinois • Brigham Young – New leader that takes them to Utah

9. Religious Discrimination • Catholics: • viewed as incompatible with American ideals of democracy • loyalty to the Pope over loyalty to the United States • Discriminated against for their extreme poverty • Would work for very low wages, angered non-Catholic workers • Jewish People: • Were excluded from holding public office • In early 1800s, only 2,000 Jewish people in America

10. Utopian Society • Utopian Communities: aspired to create perfect communities, or utopias • Shared property, labor, and family life • Hoped to engender virtue in their members and inspire other communities • Ex: • New Harmony, Indiana • People from different backgrounds worked together in a cooperative society • Lasted two years • Brook Farm, Massachusetts • Sought to combine physical and intellectual labor • Lasted 6 years

13. United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing • Also known as Shakers • Set up independent villages in New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, and Illinois • Men and women lived in separate housing • Did not marry or have children

14. Transcendentalism • Transcendentalists: people who believed that you could go beyond their senses and learn about he world • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Henry David Thoreau • Civil Disobedience • Individuals should listen to nature and their own consciences, rather than religious doctrines to learn the truth of the universe

15. Thoreau Emerson

16. Reform & Society

17. Inspiration • Second Great Awakening • Revival of religious feeling in the United States led to the belief that society needed to undergo significant changes, or reforms. • Education, mental health, prison, abolition, women’s rights, etc.

18. Education Beginnings • most American children were taught by their parents • Some established community schools • The American Spelling Book: published by Noah Webster • Language differences between America and England • new, more direct ways of spelling • Example: America: color England: colour

20. Education Movements • Education within the United States was seen as inadequate • Public School Movement: Hoped to establish tax & state supported public schools for all children • Required attendance • Argued that education would give individuals the knowledge and tools to make decisions as citizens of democracy

21. Education Leaders • Led by Horace Mann • Leader in the Massachusetts Senate • Championed the creation of a State Board of Education • state legislatures across the country established boards of education and set aside funding for public schools • Women and Education: many women trained to become teachers in these new schools

23. Mental Health Reform • Dorothea Dix: used her religious ideas to lead reforms in Mental Health and Prison Systems • Taught Sunday school in prison • Discovered that the mentally ill were being housed right beside murders and other criminals • Visited every prison, almshouse (houses for the poor), and hospital in Massachusetts • Dix wrote to the State legislature about what she saw and demanded action! • Nationwide campaign where she encouraged that hospitals be built for the mentally ill

24. Her campaign led to the creation of the first modern mental hospitals • Dorothea Dix Hospital: Raleigh, NC

26. Prison Reform • Dix also worked to establish more humane, reflective prisons • Believed that prisons were not a place to punish, but a place to rehabilitate • Debate between two prison systems: • Pennsylvania/Eastern State: complete solitary confinement, work alone, individual yards to exercise in • Very expensive • Complete isolation was viewed as cruel • Auburn Prison: worked with one another during the day, but in silence, individual cells • Many prisons followed this model

27. Temperance Movement • Reformers attributed problems within society to the widespread use of alcohol: • Crimes, sickness, poverty, neglected families • launched the Temperance Movement as an effort to end alcohol abuse • Temperance: moderate use of alcohol • Prohibition: complete ban of alcohol consumption

28. Temperance Movement • American Temperance Society: published pamphlets, held discussions, counseling, etc. • Neal Dow: became mayor of Portland, Maine and passed the “Maine Law” • Restricted the sale of alcohol

31. Anti-Slavery & Women’s Movements

32. Resisting Slavery • Resist Slavery: • Many would fight against their oppressors by breaking tools, outwitting overseers, and escaping • Underground Railroad • Denmark Vesey: planned what would have been the greatest slave revolt in history in Charleston, SC in 1822. • News of his plan leaked, he and his conspirators were captured and hanged • Nat Turner: in 1831, Turner led a slave revolt in Richmond, Virginia • Killed nearly 60 people • Stopped by a local militia, captured, and executed

36. Free African Americans • Northern states began to gradually outlaw slavery in the 1840s • Result: growing population of free blacks • Continued to suffer discrimination • American Colonization Society: goal was to encourage free blacks to return to Africa • Many were weary, considered the US their home • ACS established Liberia

37. Abolition • Idea of abolishing, or prohibiting slavery • William Lloyd Garrison: printer who became a leading abolitionist • The Liberator: abolition newspaper • Frederick Douglass: former slave who filled lecture halls with stories of his former life in slavery

39. Slavery in the South • The south continued to cling to slavery • Slavery was vital to their economy • Many in the north fight against abolition: • Workers feared free blacks would act as competition in the labor market • Slavery divides a nation • Debate over slavery split the nation • Widened regional differences

40. Women’s Movement

41. Cult of Domesticity • Belief that women belonged in the home and were to take care of their home, husband, and children • “True women” were pious, pure, domestic, and submissive to their husbands

43. Freedoms and Rights of Women • Sharply limited • Lacked many basic legal and economic rights • Could not own property, vote, speak publicly, divorce, custody of children • New opportunities were created for women by a spark in reform. • Women became very active in reform efforts • Dorothea Dix, Sojourner Truth, Angelina & Sarah Grimke

44. Women Enter the Workplace • Thousands of women went to work in mills and factories in the North • Afforded women with a small degree of economic independence

45. Fight for Rights • published their ideas in pamphlets and books • Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Conditions of Women written by the Grimke sisters • Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton: active reformers, both involved in abolition and temperance causes outraged by lack of progress in women’s rights

46. Seneca Falls • 1848: Mott and Stanton organized the nation’s first Women’s Rights Convention • Seneca Falls Convention held in New York • Attended by men and women who were advocates for women’s rights • Wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after the Declaration of Independence