Mid 1800s Culture and Reform

1. Mid 1800s Culture and Reform Unit 4.3

2. Religion • 2nd Great Awakening • Revivals – appealing to emotions • Charles Finney • Cane Ridge • Baptist and Methodist Churches grow • Largest Protestant denominations by 1850 • Formation of African-American churches. Why? • Split of churches over what issue?

3. Church of Latter-Day Saints • Founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith (in NY) • Writes Book of Mormon • Moved to Illinois • Smith killed by mob • Faced Persecution • Why? • Brigham Young takes over leadership • 1847, Young leads Mormons to Utah. • Prosper on Great Salt Lake • What would save them from katydids (Mormon Crickets)? • What issue would cause conflicts with U.S. government?

4. The Transcendentalists • Transcendentalism – both a writing style and a philosophy • Stressed individualism, nature, and self reliance • Stressed reason and understanding (finding inner self) • Questioned established churches and consumerism • Supported a variety of reforms • Most famous: • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Essay – “Self-reliance” • Henry David Thoreau • Essay – “Civil Disobedience” • Book - Walden

5. Utopian Communities • Idea of withdrawing from Conventional society to create the “ideal” society • Some religious • Mormons • Shakers • Held property in common • Forbid marriage and sex • Any guess why they died out from 6,000 in 1840s? • Social Communal Experiments • New Harmony (Indiana) founded by Robert Owen • Reaction to Industrial Revolution • Brook Farm (Massachusetts) • Attracted Transcendentalists • Why attracted? • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Nathaniel Hawthorne • Oneida (New York) • Criticized for communal child-rearing and “free-love” • Why did it survive?

6. Literature • Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau • After War of 1812 writers became more nationalistic and American themes became popular. • James Fenimore Cooper – Leatherstocking Tales, Last of the Mohicans • Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter • Herman Melville – Moby Dick • Walt Whitman – poetry • Romanticism style / “Nature”

7. Architecture and Artstressed American and common man themes • Architecture adopted Greek styles • Glorified democratic spirit during Jacksonian era. • Columned facades • Hudson River school • Expressed beauty of American landscapes • Showed nature • Thomas Cole • Frederic Church

8. Drinking Problem? • Temperance Movement – concerned with high rate of alcohol consumption and effects • American Temperance Society founded in 1826 • Movement led by Women • Maine became 1ststate to have prohibition • In 1850s, issue of slavery overshadowed temperance, but after Civil War the movement would gain strength again (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) • Sylvester Graham

9. What about those with disabilities? • Schools for Blind and Deaf • Thomas Gallaudet founded first school for deaf. Model for reform. • Mental Asylums • Dorothea Dix shocked to find mentally ill were housed in prisons. • Worked for mental hospitals and treatment at state expense. • Dix also worked for prison reforms

10. Teachers, leave those kids alone… • Reformers concerned with growing numbers of uneducated poor. • Workers pushed for public (tax-supported) schools in cities • Horace Mann – leading advocate • Advances added: • Teacher-training schools • Compulsory attendance laws • Standardized school year • By 1850, most in north went till age 10 • Germans thought it was “Americanization” • Was it?

11. Woman’s Role in 1800s • Industrialization effects in cities • Men left home for work while women managed household and children • Agricultural advances in country • Majority of people were still farmers • Women were needed less to help with physical work. • Role also more in the house and with children • Cult of Domesticity – men were expected to be responsible for economic and political affairs while women on care of home and children

12. Women’s Rights Movement • Starts with middle-class women, many in anti-slavery movement. • Sarah and Angelina Grimke – upset about male opposition to their activities • Support stronger in North. • Seneca Falls Convention 1848 – first women’s rights convention • Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott • Issued their Declaration of Sentiments • Most Americans agreed some with movement, but were not in support of radical change. • Movement was overshadowed by crisis over slavery • In later decades, Susan B. Anthony becomes leader.

13. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course. • We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

14. Abolition • American Colonization Society – idea in early 1800s to transport freed slaves to African colony of Liberia • Why did some people like this idea (for the wrong reasons)? • Why did it not work? • American Anti-slavery Society • led by William Lloyd Garrison through his newspaper The Liberator • Garrison seen as radical in views • Liberty Party – 3rd party in 1840 and 1844 that opposed slavery

15. Perfectionism • The Perfectionism Movement was this idea in the mid-1800s that humans can change the earth to make it better (“Cure society’s ills”) • The reform movements, religious movements, as well as literary movements contribute to this idea.

16. Reflection Questions • How did the ideas of the utopian communities and the transcendentalists help led to reforms? • In what ways did the “American” culture mature and develop during after the War of 1812? • In what ways was the Perfectionist movement shown in the reforms? • How were many of these reform and cultural movement interwoven?

17. Links • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL7Zd0SWWvE&list=UUZYs757tACChkS-vjS1m66Q&index=52&feature=plcp – review video • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdjbOxyRwEM – women rights • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-5aT4hfBIE – 1800s education reform song • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m58FDTyZa7k – reform movements PowerPoint