Shaping America in the Antebellum Age: Reform and Political Shifts

1. Chapter 12Shaping America in the Antebellum Age The American People, 6th ed.

2. Religious Revival and Reform Philosophy

3. Finney and the Second Great Awakening • From the late 1790s to the late 1830s, a wave of religious revivalism swept through the United States. • Personified by the flamboyant Charles Finney who preached every night for six months in Rochester, New York. • Revivalists toned down the Calvinist rhetoric and preached a religion of inclusiveness.

5. The Transcendentalists • A small but influential group of New England intellectuals who lived around Ralph Waldo Emerson, the era’s foremost thinker. • The group was called Transcendentalists because of their belief that truth was found in intuition beyond the senses. • They questioned slavery and the pursuit of wealth. • Members included Nathanial Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau (“On Civil Disobedience”)

6. The Political Response to Change

7. Changing Political Culture • Andrew Jackson’s presidency was instrumental in bringing politics to the center focus of many American lives. • Jackson promised a more democratic system of politics. • He was personally not very democratic, owned slaves, and favored the forced removal of Indians to the west. • His administration did see the effectual emergence of a competitive party system.

9. Old Hickory’s Vigorous Presidency • Jackson’s key principles: • Majority rule • Limited power of the national government • The obligation of the government to defend the nation’s average people against the tyranny of the wealthy • Aggressive use of the presidential veto • Favored a rotational system of staffing the government

10. Jackson’s Indian Policy • Andrew Jackson favored forcible removal and relocation westward on reservations. • A Supreme Court decision in 1823 stating that Indians could occupy but not hold title to land in the United States made Jackson’s policy easy to implement. • Using harassment and bribery, Jackson’s administration forced many of the Indian Nations to march west to present-day Oklahoma.

13. Jackson’s Bank War • The Second Bank of the United States had been in service since 1823 and had thirteen years left on its charter. • A responsible organization, the Bank restrained smaller state banks form making unwise loans by insisting payment in the form of specie (gold or silver). • American business wanted cheap, inflated, paper money to fund expansion. • Jackson used the struggle to underscore differences between social classes. • The sound fiscal policy of the Bank won out and caused The Panic of 1837.

14. The Second American Party System • Democrats: had a sounder claim of representation of the common man with a broad base of support across the nation, logic often shaped policy • Whigs (formerly Republicans): represented majority of wealth in America and big businesses, religion often shaped policy

16. Perfectionist Reform and Utopianism

18. Utopian Communities: Oneida and the Shakers • Many reformers of the age sought to create the perfect representation in miniature of what life should be. • John Humphrey Noyles founded a society of “free love” and socialism at Oneida, New York. • The Shakers believed in communal property, perfectionism, and celibacy. • Shaker worship featured a wild dance intended to release sin from the body.

20. Other Utopias • Over 100 communities like the Shakers and Oneida were founded during the era: • The Ephrata colony of Pennsylvania • The Hopedale community of Mass. • The Harmonists of Indiana • Closely related were the Millerites and Mormons

21. IV. Reforming Society

22. Temperance • Nineteenth century Americans drank to excess. • Early efforts at curbing the public’s consumption focused on moderation. • The American Temperance Society (1826) was dedicated to total abstinence. • The Society successfully used revival techniques of the Second Great Awakening to motivate “converts.”

23. Humanizing the Asylum • Some efforts of reform were not aimed at the salvation of the individual but towards organizations such as hospitals or asylums. • Dorothea Dix championed the cause of the mentally ill, believing adequate facilities and proper living conditions would go far to produce some sort of a “cure.”

24. Working-Class Reform • In America, the institution most in need of reform was the factory. • The reform movement gradually was adapted to the plight of workers and trade unions began to appear. • Skilled workers began to organize to protect their crafts and to negotiate better conditions. • The National Trades Union (1834) was the first attempt at a nation-wide labor organization.

25. Tensions Within the Antislavery Movement • William Lloyd Garrison published The Liberator—America’s first antislavery journal and helped establish the American Anti-Slavery Society. • Garrison’s message was an immediate end to slavery with no conditions. • The majority of abolitionists in America disagreed on how to reform slavery in America; most preferred religious education, political action, boycotts of slave-harvested goods, or downright rebellion.