Some of the reform tied to the new feeling of Democracy that Jackson brings -- people begin to take on religion and causes personally
Second Great Awakening
Period of religious revival from 1820s to 1860
Focused on individual personal conversions -- personal relationship with God
Baptists, Methodists, other more personal and less organized religions
Burned-over District -- upstate New York from Albany to Buffalo -- subject to intense and repeated revival movement -- called the "burned-over district" because of all the hellfire and brimstone sermons preached there
Second Great Awakening spawned other revivals such as Abolition, temperance, educational revival, etc?
Splinter Groups -- not mainstream Christianity -- elements of Utopian Socialism
Shakers
-- separated men and women and strove for perfection -- celibate -- furniture and seed harvesting (did simple things perfectly) -- dying by mid 20th century due to lack of numbers (no children)
Mormons
-- Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
founded in New York by Joseph Smith (the prophet)
claimed to have received a set of golden plates from an angel containing a lost story from the Bible -- today known as the Book of Mormon
story was of the American Indians and how Jesus came to them after he rose from the dead
claimed thousands of converts
problems with neighbors in New York forced the Mormons to move west to Illinois. They settled down in Nauvoo, but eventually problems arose their too, mostly over the group's polygamy (men took many wives)
1844 -- Smith killed -- Mormons now led by Brigham Young
Brigham Young -- smart -- strong-willed -- visionary -- had 16 wives and 57 children -- decides to move the Mormons to a western wilderness paradise where they will be left alone
1847 -- first batch of Mormons arrive at the Great Salt Lake to carve out their paradise -- unbelievable determination and planning quickly turns the desert into a thriving community
Reform Movements
Temperance
-- against alcohol -- led by women tired of their husbands drinking -- first real entry into political world by women -- attacked men for drinking while at the same time pushed politicians for prohibition -- won't go away -- 1851 Maine passes a prohibition law (doesn't last) -- 1919 (18th amendment) passed making the manufacture and sale of alcohol illegal (repealed in 1933)
Women's Rights
-- led by Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Caty Stanton and Susan B. Anthony -- wanted equal rights for women -- women before the 1840s were mostly considered to be the weaker sex, both in mind and body -- the "cult of domesticity" surrounded the home (ideal for middle class women -- I'll explain in class) -- many feminists led the anti-slavery crusade as well -- problem: anti-slavery seen as a more pressing problem by many male reformers -- 1848: Senaca Falls Convention -- convention of feminists (male and female) in Senaca Falls, New York -- launched modern women's rights movement -- also the beginning of the movement for women's voting rights (19th amendment in 1920)
Education Reform
-- Horace Mann of Massachusetts came up with the idea of free public tax-supported primary schools -- idea catches on in New England and later throughout the North -- rich conservatives see it as a way to control what the underclass thinks and believes -- the South lags behind even today -- before the Civil War it was illegal for blacks to learn how to read in most parts of the South -- rural whites suffered as well -- plantation schools with private teachers educated plantation children (often from the surrounding plantations as well -- legacy remains with the South today -- Hattiesburg, MS spends $1700 per student (1996 figure) and has a 45% dropout rate (1998 figure) -- 25% of adults in MS over age of 16 are functionally illiterate according to a recently published study
Abolition
---- considered the greatest of all reform movements from the 1830s
two wings of the reform movement
William Lloyd Garrison -- Liberator -- started in 1831 as a newspaper for the radical wing of the movement -- sees the South as morally corrupt and attacks slavery as a moral crusade -- even calls for a split with the South -- in 1860 he'll call for the US to let the South go -- stern and uncompromising -- other strict moral abolitionists included Wendell Phillips and Louis Tappan
Fredrick Douglass -- greatest black abolitionist -- ex-slave who escaped to the North from Georgia in 1838 at the age of 21 -- lectured widely across the North -- flexible and practical -- tried to attack slavery through political means -- think of Theodore Josten from Amistad
American Colonization Society -- founded in 1817 as an idea to take ex-slaves back to Africa -- many prominent political supporters -- founded the American colony of Liberia in West Africa (capital city was Monrovia) in 1822 -- by 1860, 15000 ex-slaves had gone to Liberia
American Anti-Slavery Society
-- founded in 1832 by Garrison -- group included Tappan brothers and Beechers (prominent abolitionist family that included Harriet Beecher Stowe) -- worker to fight slavery wherever it may be -- called for equality with blacks (a really radical idea) -- for thirty years the society sponsored abolitionist movements (some violent) across the North and Border States (we'll see these guys again in the 1850s)
In the end, abolition remained a small but growing movement. Most northerners simply refused to accept black equality and felt that the issue was a southern one. The abolitionists did have one thing going for them -- they believed in their cause to the point of a crusade and refused to simply go away.
Southern Response to Abolitionism
Slavery as a Positive Good
Before 1830s -- slavery seen as a necessary evil for southern society
Necessary Evil Theory based on Economics and the development of a plantation agricultural system
Cash crops = labor intensive = need for a constant source of available labor = need for slavery
Even after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by Eli Whitney, many southern cotton planters looked not to their own profits, but rather to northern textile mills as the reason slavery continued.
With the rise of the radical Abolitionist movement in the North during the 1830s, however, a new justification for the institution came in response
Slavery by the late 1830s was seen not as a necessary evil, but rather as a positive good for both southern society and slaves themselves
Radical abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison attacked the slave society as morally corrupt. Southern "fire eaters" struck back with a rhetoric that sought to justify the institution of slavery.
1831 -- VA legislature debates the idea of gradual emancipation and the bill is defeated only after a hard fight 73-58
After 1831 (no coincidence that this date happens to be the same year that Nat Turner's rebellion sent shock waves throughout the South) -- southern society turns to many different arguments in defending the institution -- each designed to bolster the idea that slavery was a positive good.
Biblical Argument
LV 25: 44-46
Slaves, male and female, you may indeed possess, provided you buy them from among neighboring nations. You may also buy them from among the aliens who reside with you and from their children who are born and reared in your land. Such slaves you may own as chattels, and leave to your sons as their hereditary property, making them perpetual slaves. But you shall not lord it harshly over any of the Israelites, your kinsmen.
Ephesians 6:6
Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to your flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ
By enslaving Africans, whites actually saved their souls from eternal damnation -- Africans were heathens (actually a number were Moslem), and the generosity of the Southern masters showed in the fact that slaves were given religion and then sent to heaven to be with God. Planters, of course, made sure to emphasize the passages above.
Paternalism
-- the idea that slaves were seen as children to be cared for -- compare to "wage slaves" in the North. Southern rhetoric was paternalistic -- made the South seem more civilized
Paternalism in the South manifested itself in different styles, depending on the individuals and classes involved. Elite planters saw themselves as successors to the legacy of Washington, Madison and Jefferson. Since the earliest days of settlement, natural leaders had taken it upon themselves to govern. Enlightened liberalism taught men of stature to lead by example. Planters for decades sacrificed monetary gain for civil order and stability.
Southern men guided their lives by the doctrine of paternalism and many came to see slaves as part of an extended family. Using punishment and coercion in maintaining order was akin to disciplining a disobedient child. Masters owed slaves stability, food, clothing and Christianity. Slaves in turn paid for these items by the sweat of their labor. Numerous cases of mistreatment abound, but antebellum society was one of violence, both in and out of the home. Bondsmen were beaten, but so were wives and children. Southern culture glorified violence. Harsh punishment for even the smallest offense was common. Twentieth century conceptions of violence, however, should not cloud the truth. Slaveholders practiced their own code of civility by allowing their slaves work-free Sundays and celebrations on Independence Day.
Elitist benevolence permeated daily plantation culture, but southern paternalism existed within white society was well. Using racial superiority as unifying theme, large planters secured implicit support from lower class slaveholders and non-slaveholding whites. -- Mudsill theory and slavery based on race.
Although white society was no less stratified than before, hope of advancement quelled any class rebellion. Many small white farmers, such as those in the Piney Woods of Mississippi, eked out a living in the hope of one day prospering enough to buy a slave or two. In a society based on agriculture, slaves meant wealth and the ability to produce more marketable goods. As long as blacks occupied the lowest rung of the social order equality among whites was possible. Southern slavery apologists candidly pointed towards England and the North for examples of irreconcilable class divisions. Slavery, it was said, created proper social harmony and order. Lower and middle class whites bought the rhetoric throughout the antebellum period.
The South's peculiar institution by the 1830s achieved a fixed and protected status throughout the region below the Mason-Dixon Line, while at the same time, each move by the South brought a more radical tone from Garrison and his supporters. Luckily for the country, Garrison and the rest of the radical abolitionists failed to achieve a dominant position in a northern society that was as racist, if not more racist, than that of the South.
Paternalistic rhetoric defended slavery, both to slaveholders and in response to constant abolitionist rhetoric. The market revolution ensured the discourse did not get out of hand. Racism held the system together. Order and stability were preserved, at least for a while. Yankee bullets would destroy paternalistic ideas. Elite planters and their representatives would lead their men onto the fields of Gettysburg and Shiloh, but few would come home to the shattered remains of their once proud society.