US:
A Narrative History Volume 1 – Chapter 12 Review
The Fires of
Perfection [1820-1850]
The Beechers and the
Kingdom of God
In 1826 the Reverend Lyman Beecher was
probably the most celebrated minister of the Republic, and the pulpit of
Hanover Street Church was his to command. Beecher looked and spoke like a pious
farmer, but every Sunday he was transformed when he mounted the pulpit of
Boston's most imposing church. From there he would blaze forth denunciations of
dancing, drinking, dueling, and “infidelity,” all the while punctuating his
sermon with pump-handle strokes of the right hand. Nor were Beecher's ambitions
small. His goal was nothing less than to bring the kingdom of Christ to the
nation and the world. Like many ministers, Beecher had studied the intriguing
final book of the New Testament, the Revelation to John. The Revelation
foretold in the latter days of Earth a glorious millennium—a thousand years of
peace and triumph—when the saints would rule and evil would be banished from
the world. Beecher was convinced that the long-awaited millennium might well
begin in the United States. Personal experience reinforced this optimism. Born
to a sturdy line of New England blacksmiths in 1775, Beecher entered Yale
College during the high tide of postwar nationalism—and, some said, the lowest
ebb of religion among young people. In the revivals of the Second Great
Awakening that came to many colleges in 1802, Beecher had been one of those
converted. Much of Lyman Beecher's boundless energy went into raising a family
of 11 children, every one of whom he prayed would take leading roles in
bringing the kingdom of God to America. He loved to wrestle on the floor with
his sons, climb the highest trees, or go “berrying” with his daughters. Still,
the religious dimension of their lives was constant. The family attended two
services on Sunday, a weekly prayer meeting, and a monthly “concert of prayer,”
where the devout met to pray for the conversion of the world. Beecher's son
Thomas remembered his father commanding: “Overturn and overturn till He whose
right it is shall come and reign, King of nations and King of saints.” To usher
in the kingdom of God entire communities and even nations would have to be
swept with the fire of millennialism. Toward that end Beecher joined other
Protestant ministers in supporting a host of religious reforms and missionary
efforts. By 1820 they had formed voluntary organizations devoted to a wide
range of activities: blanketing the United States with tracts and bibles,
educating young men for the ministry, sending missionaries to every corner of
the globe, promoting Sunday schools for children, ministering to sailors and
the poor, reforming drunkards, and stopping business on the Sabbath. To
Beecher, the organizations constituting this loosely united “Benevolent Empire”
were signs of the coming kingdom. As the new pastor at Hanover Street, Beecher
also directed his righteous artillery on a host of evils that seemed to be
obstructing God's kingdom. With scorn he attacked Unitarians, whose liberal,
rational creed rejected the divinity of Jesus. In Boston Unitarians were mainly
upper class and cultured. But Beecher also denounced what he viewed as sinful
pastimes of the lower class: playing cards, gambling, and drinking. And he
denounced Roman Catholic priests and nuns as superstitious, devious agents of
“Antichrist.” Beecher's efforts at “moral reform” antagonized many immigrants
and other working people who enjoyed their lotteries or liquor. In disdain they
referred to Hanover Street Church, with its imposing stone tower, as Beecher's
“stone jug.” After all, it was there that its pastor drank most deeply of his
religious spirits. In 1830 a blaze broke out in the basement and quickly spread
upward. Along with a mob, firefighters rushed to the scene—but did little more
than watch the blaze and make jokes about “Old Beecher” and “hell-fire.” If
Beecher had little respect for their ways, they had little respect for his. The
heat from the flames cracked the stone tower from top to bottom, and the splendid
structure burned into ruins. Beecher put a brave face on the disaster. “Well,
my jug's broke; just been to see it,” he reported cheerfully to his friends the
morning after. But the setback was sobering. Any fire, real or spiritual, is
unpredictable as it spreads from one scrap of tinder to the next. That proved
to be the case with reform movements of the 1820s and 1830s, as they developed
and moved in diverging, sometimes contradictory, ways. What did it mean, after
all, to make a heaven on earth? In The Way of Good and Evil devout Christians
are all helped on the path (right) to millennial perfection by the virtues of
family, religion, education, and hard work. Sinners on the left, however, take
the path of disobedience, intemperance, and lying—straight to hell. Lyman
Beecher embodied the spirit of antebellum evangelical Protestantism. At the
core of evangelicalism was the conviction that divine grace brought about a new
birth, one that enabled belief in Jesus Christ. That conviction also committed the
individual convert to reforming his or her own vices as well as the faults of
others. But evangelicalism changed over the course of Beecher's long life. As
it did, so did its influence on Christian believers. Early nineteenth-century
evangelical leaders such as Beecher sought to convert individuals through
revivals and then to turn their energies toward reforming others through the
voluntary associations of the Benevolent Empire. Their conservative aim, as he
expressed it, was to restore America to “the moral government of God.”
The Transformation of
American Evangelicalism
Before about 1800 most American evangelicals
embraced the doctrines of Calvinism (see page 42, Chapter 2). Calvinists
believed that God had determined which individuals were destined to be damned
or saved and that no human effort could alter those eternal fates. They
believed that individuals could do nothing to bring about their own salvation. But
such propositions seemed increasingly unreasonable to the proud American heirs
of a revolution that celebrated human equality, free will, and reason. By the
beginning of the nineteenth century a growing number of evangelicals moved
toward a new outlook. It did not deny the sinfulness of human nature and the
necessity of divine grace for salvation. But it did grant more power to free
will and human effort. That more democratic belief—that all men and women might
choose and win salvation, that each individual should take an active
responsibility for redemption—came to characterize the religious views of most
evangelicals among the ranks of Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists,
and Methodists. Over the course of the Second Great Awakening, their more
optimistic view of human potential fostered revivals and sparked ambitious
programs for reforming individuals and society.
Charles Grandison Finney and Modern Revivalism
The man who embodied this transformed evangelicalism was
Charles Grandison Finney, the founder of modern revivalism. In 1821, as a young
man, Finney experienced a soul-shattering conversion that led him to give up
his law practice to become an itinerant minister. Eventually he was ordained in
the Presbyterian Church, although he lacked any formal theological training. He
first attracted national attention when in the mid-1820s and early 1830s he
conducted a series of spectacular revivals in the booming port cities along the
new Erie Canal. Like George Whitefield before him, Finney had an entrancing
voice that carried great distances. His power over an audience was such that
when he described the descent of a sinner into hell, those in the back of the
hall rose to witness the final plunge. His success also resulted from his use
of special techniques—“the new measures.” These methods of encouraging
conversion had been developed during the frontier revivals of the Second Great
Awakening (pages 234–235, Chapter 9). Finney's contribution was to popularize
the techniques and use them systematically. He held “protracted meetings” night
after night to build up excitement. Speaking boldly and bluntly, he prayed for
sinners by name, encouraged women to testify in public gatherings, and placed
those struggling with conversion on the “anxious bench” at the front of the
church. Whereas the leaders of the first Great Awakening had looked on revivals
as god-sent outpourings of grace, Finney viewed them as the consequence of
human agency. “A revival is not a miracle,” he coolly declared, “it is a purely
scientific result of the right use of constituted means.” Like other
evangelical revivalists of his day, Finney looked to help individuals undergo
an emotionally wrenching conversion experience and be reborn. In doing so, he
left little role for the deity in the drama of human deliverance. He endorsed
free will and preached that all men and women who wanted to could be saved. To
those anxious about their salvation, he thundered, “Do it!” With salvation
within reach of every individual, what might be in store for society at large?
“If the church would do her duty,” Finney confidently predicted, “the millennium
may come in this country in three years.”
The Appeal of Evangelicalism
The revivals of the Second Great Awakening drew converts
from every segment of American society. Men, women and children, whites,
African Americans and Indians, northerners and southerners, slave and free—all
joined evangelical churches in unprecedented numbers during the opening decades
of the nineteenth century. Evangelicalism proved a potent and protean faith,
one that could be adapted to answer both the spiritual strivings and needs and
the worldly anxieties and sufferings of diverse groups. In the North,
middle-class white men under intense pressure from the market economy—lawyers,
merchants, and manufacturers—found in evangelicalism's celebration of human
ability the assurance that they could contend with the uncertainties in their
lives. The emerging urban working class, struggling to stay afloat in the face
of industrialization, found in evangelicalism's moral code a discipline that
called for self-control and self-improvement. Rural southerners—planters and
farmers alike—found their mastery over wives, children, and blacks confirmed by
evangelical teachings. And white men of all classes, in North and South, found
that church membership and the reputation it conferred for sobriety, honesty,
and respectability often helped them to get ahead in a rootless, competitive
society. Blacks, both free and enslaved, joined antebellum churches in
impressive numbers, even as they continued to forge a distinctive and
liberating faith by infusing evangelicalism with African religious traditions.
(For a discussion of religion among slaves, see Chapter 13, as well as “After
the Fact,” pages 210–213.) Sharpening racial tensions led to the formation of
black Methodist and Baptist churches in a number of northern and southern
cities. The most important was the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church,
organized at Philadelphia in 1816. Richard Allen, a former Delaware slave who
bought his freedom, became that denomination's first bishop. Growing fears for
the security of slavery caused southern white communities, especially in the
Deep South, to suppress independent black churches after 1820. But black
evangelical churches continued to grow in the North and to serve as organizing
centers for the swelling African-American opposition to slavery. By 1856 the
AME Church boasted some 20,000 members.
Women, Marriage, and Conversion
Despite the prominence of men as both clerical and lay
leaders in the Second Great Awakening, it was women—black and white, northern
and southern—whose presence dominated antebellum revivals and churches. In most
revivals, female converts outnumbered males by about three to two. Usually the
first convert in a family was a woman, and many men who converted were related
to women who had come forward earlier. Women played an important role in the
Awakening partly because of changes in their own social universe. Instead of
parents arranging the marriages of their children, couples were beginning to
wed more often on the basis of affection. Under such conditions, a woman's
prospects for marriage became less certain, and in older areas such as New
England and the coastal South, the migration of so many young men to the West
compounded this uncertainty. Yet marriage was deemed important for a woman's
happiness, and it remained essential for her economic security. The unpredictability of these social circumstances drew
young women toward religion. Women between the ages of 12 and 25 were
especially susceptible to conversion. Joining a church heightened a young
woman's feeling of initiative and gave her a sense of purpose. By establishing
respectability and widening her social circle of friends, church membership
also enhanced her chances of marriage. And before and after marriage, it opened
opportunities to participate in benevolent and reform associations that took
women outside the domestic circle and into a realm of public activism.
The Significance of the Second Great Awakening
As a result of the Second Great Awakening, the dominant
form of Christianity in America became evangelical Protestantism. Membership in
the major Protestant churches—Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, and
Methodist—soared during the first half of the nineteenth century. By 1840 an
estimated half of the adult population was connected to some church, with the
Methodists emerging as the largest Protestant denomination in both the North
and the South. Observers such as Tocqueville noted the striking contrast with
Europe, where adherence to Christianity declined sharply over the same decades.
Not only their sheer numbers but also their institutional presence made
evangelicals a formidable force. Their organizations to distribute tracts and
bibles, organize Sunday schools and staff missions, encourage temperance and
promote Sabbath observance all operated at a national level. The only other
institutions able to make such a claim were the Second Bank of the United
States and the Post Office. Evangelical publications dominated the markets for
both religious periodicals and books. Few were more aware of the scope of
evangelicalism's sway than Lyman Beecher. Earlier in his career, he had
lamented the collapse of state-supported Congregationalist religious
establishments throughout New England. But looking back in later years, he
realized that the churches did not need government support to figure as
powerful forces in the United States. To his delight, Beecher concluded that
evangelicals had, in fact, gained “deeper influence” since disestablishment “by
voluntary efforts, societies, missions, and revivals.”
Revivalism and the Social Order
How right he was. The revivals of the Second Great
Awakening had profound and lasting consequences. Its effects went well beyond
the churching of hundreds of thousands of American men, women, and children and
the spectacular growth of evangelical Protestant denominations. Religious
commitment fundamentally reshaped antebellum society because, to keep the
fervor afire, Beecher, Finney, and their fellow revivalists channeled the
energies of their converts into an array of benevolent and reform societies.
But zealous evangelicals did a great deal more than teach Sunday school at home
and dispatch missionaries abroad. As early as the 1820s and 1830s their
activism had already significantly affected three aspects of American culture:
drinking habits, ideals of women and the family, and Protestant attitudes
toward a growing population of Roman Catholics.
The Temperance Movement
The temperance campaign, a reform dear to the heart of
Lyman Beecher and other evangelical clergy, effected a sweeping change in the
personal habits of many Americans. Until the mid-eighteenth century most
colonials (and Europeans) considered spirits an essential supplement to their
diet. Liquor flowed freely at ministerial ordinations in New England towns,
court days in the South, house-raisings, corn-huskings, and quilting bees on
the frontier, not to mention weddings, elections, and militia musters
everywhere. Colonial Americans did not condone public drunkenness, but they saw
nothing amiss in the regular use of alcohol or even in occasional intoxication.
But alcohol consumption soared after the Revolution, so that by 1825 the
average American over the age of 15 consumed seven gallons of absolute alcohol
a year, the highest level in American history and nearly triple present-day
levels. Led largely by clergy, the
movement at first focused on drunkenness and did not oppose moderate drinking.
But in 1826 the American Temperance Society was founded, taking voluntary abstinence
as its goal. During the next decade approximately 5,000 local temperance
societies were founded. As the movement gained momentum, annual per capita
consumption of alcohol dropped sharply. By 1845 it had fallen below two gallons
a year. The temperance movement lasted longer and attracted many more
supporters than other reforms did. It appealed to young and old, to urban and
rural residents, to workers and businesspeople. Moreover, it was one of the few
reform movements with significant support in the South. Its success came partly
for social reasons. Democracy necessitated sober voters; factories required
sober workers. In addition, temperance attracted the upwardly
mobile—professionals, small businesspeople, and skilled artisans anxious to
improve their social standing. Finally, temperance advocates stressed the
suffering that men inflicted on women and children, and thus the movement
appealed to women as a means to defend the home and carry out their domestic
mission.
Ideals of Women and the Family
As business affairs grew increasingly separate from the
family in the nineteenth century, the middle-class home became a female domain.
A woman's role as a wife and mother was to dispense love and moral guidance to
her husband and her children. As this domestic scene makes clear, she was at
the very center of the world of the family. Evangelicals also contributed
substantially to a new ideal of womanhood, one being elaborated by the clergy
and female authors in sermons, advice manuals, magazine articles, and novels
during the first half of the nineteenth century. Called the “cult of
domesticity” or “true womanhood” or “evangelical womanhood,” that ideal cast
wives and mothers as the “angels” of their households, the sex ideally suited
to serve as dispensers of love, comfort, and moral instruction to husbands and
children. The premise of that new ideal was that men and women, by their very
nature, inhabited separate spheres. The rough and tumble world of business and
politics was the proper province of husbands and fathers, while women ruled the
domestic sphere of home and family. “Love is our life our reality, business
yours,” Mollie Clark told one suitor. This new ideal also held that women were
by nature morally stronger and more religious than men. That view reversed the
negative medieval and early modern views of women as the sinful daughters of
the temptress Eve, more passionate by nature and thus less morally restrained
and spiritually inclined than men. But the new ideal also held antebellum women
to a higher standard of sexual purity. A man's sexual infidelity, although
hardly condoned, brought no lasting shame. But a woman who engaged in sexual
relations before marriage or was unfaithful afterward was threatened with
everlasting disgrace. Under this new double standard, women were to be pure,
passionless, and passive: they were to submerge their identities in those of
their husbands. Advocates of the new ideal of womanhood and the notion of
separate spheres beamed their message mainly at elite and middle-class women.
And that message found an impressionable audience among wives and daughters in
the urbanizing Northeast. There the separation of the workplace from the home
was most complete. As a result of industrialization, many men worked outside
the home, while the rise of factories also led to a decline in part-time work
such as spinning, which women had once performed to supplement family income.
Home manufacturing was no longer essential, for, except on the frontier,
families could easily purchase those articles that women previously had made,
such as cloth, soap, and candles. “The transition from mother-and-daughter
power to water-and-steam power,” one New England minister noted, produced “a
complete revolution of domestic life.” This growing separation of the household
from the workplace in the Northeast made it that much easier for the home to be
idealized as a place of “domesticity,” a haven away from the competitive,
workaday world, with the mother firmly at its center.The celebration of domesticity was not unique to the
United States. The middle class became increasingly important in Europe, so
that after 1850 it was culturally dominant. Employment opportunities expanded
for women as industrialization accelerated, yet the social expectation among the
middle class was that women would not be employed outside the home. This
redefinition of women's roles was more sweeping in Europe because previously,
middle-class women had left the task of child-raising largely to hired nurses
and governesses. By mid-century these mothers devoted much more time to
domestic duties, including rearing the children. Family size also declined,
both in France and in England. The middle class was most numerous in England;
indeed, the importance of the middle class in Britain during Queen Victoria's
reign (1837–1901) gave these ideals the label Victorianism. As elite and
middle-class homes came to be seen as havens of moral virtue, those domestic
settings developed a new structure and new set of attitudes closer in spirit to
those of the modern family. One basic change was the rise of privacy. The
family was increasingly seen as a sheltered retreat from the outside world. In
addition, the pressures to achieve success led middle-class young adults to
delay marriage, since a husband was expected to have the financial means to
support his wife. Smaller family size resulted, since wives, especially those
among the urban middle class, began to use birth control to space children
farther apart and to minimize the risks of pregnancy. In addition, it has been
estimated that before 1860 one abortion was performed for every five or six
live births. With smaller families, parents could tend more carefully to their
children's success. Increasingly middle-class families took on the expense of additional
education to prepare their sons for a career in business. They also frequently
equalized inheritances rather than favoring the eldest son or favoring sons
over daughters.
Expanding Public Roles for Women
Most women in the United States did not have time to make
domesticity the center of their lives. Farmers' wives and enslaved women had to
work constantly, whereas lower-class families could not get by without the
wages of female members. Still, some elite and middle-class women tried to live
up to the new ideals, though many found the effort confining. “The great trial
is that I have nothing to do,” one complained. “Here I am with abundant leisure
and capable, I believe, of accomplishing some good, and yet with no object on
which to expend my energies.” In response to those frustrations, Lyman
Beecher's eldest daughter, Catharine (who never married), made a career out of
assuring women that the proper care of household and children was their sex's
crucial responsibility. Like the earlier advocates of “republican motherhood”
(see Chapter 8), Catharine Beecher supported women's education and argued that
women exercised power as moral guardians of the nation's future. She also wrote
several books on efficient home management. “There is no one thing more
necessary to a housekeeper in performing her varied duties, than a habit of
system and order,” she told readers. “For all the time afforded us, we must
give account to God.” But many women yearned to exert moral authority outside
of the confines of their households, and, ironically, the new host of
benevolent and reform societies allowed them that unprecedented opportunity.
Devout wives and daughters, particularly those from middle class families,
flocked to these voluntary associations, many of which had separate women's
chapters. By serving in such organizations, they gained the practical
experience of holding office on governing boards, conducting meetings, drafting
policy statements, organizing reform programs, and raising money.
Evangelicalism thus enabled women to enter public life and to make their voices
heard in ways that were socially acceptable. After all, evangelical teachings
affirmed that they were the superior sex in piety and morality, a point often
repeated by those very women who devoted much of their time to benevolence and
reform. They justified such public activism as merely the logical extension of
their private responsibility to act as spiritual guides to their families.
Protestants and Catholics
Women's piety and their spiritual influence was surely on
the mind of Isaac Bird one Saturday morning in the autumn of 1819. A devout
evangelical preparing for the ministry, he had wandered into a Roman Catholic Church
in Boston and now watched with rapt attention a ritual, conducted entirely in
Latin, in which two women “took the veil” and became nuns. Bird often visited
Boston on his vacations to proselytize its poorest inhabitants. Many were
Catholics, as he noted, some of them recent Irish and German immigrants and
others African American, including a man who asked him many intelligent
questions about religion and “treated me respectfully but seemed to feel that
Protestants were all making a trade of preaching and praying.” It troubled
Bird, this gathering presence of devout Catholics. Protestants had a long
history of hostility toward Roman Catholics, especially in New England. Every
November, colonial Bostonians had celebrated “Pope's Day” with boys decked out
as the devil's imps parading through the streets with a cart carrying an effigy
of the pope. The uproar over the Quebec Act in 1774 also bore loud witness to
anti-Catholic sentiments (page 153, Chapter 6). But before the beginning of the
nineteenth century the number of Catholics had been small: in 1815, there were
only 150,000 scattered throughout the United States, and they often had little
access to priests or public worship. That had begun to change by 1820. French
Canadian Catholic immigrants were filtering into New England in growing
numbers, an incoming tide that would rise sharply during the 1840s and 1850s,
with a new wave of Catholic immigrants from the British Isles and
German-speaking countries. By 1830 the Catholic population had jumped to
300,000, and by 1850 they accounted for 8 percent of the U.S. population—the
same proportion as Presbyterians. As these newcomers settled in eastern cities
and on western frontiers, there were an increasing number of priests, nuns, and
churches to minister to their spiritual needs. The differences between Roman
Catholicism and Protestantism—especially evangelicalism—were substantial.
Whereas evangelicals stressed the inward transformation of conversion,
Catholics emphasized the importance of outward religious observances, such as
faithfully attending mass and receiving the sacraments, as essential to
salvation. Whereas evangelicals insisted that individuals read the Bible to
discover God's will, Catholics urged their faithful to heed church teachings
and traditions. Whereas Catholics believed that human suffering could be a
penance paving the way toward redemption, evangelicals regarded it as an evil
to be alleviated. Whereas evangelicals looked toward an imminent millennium,
Catholics harbored no such expectation and played almost no role in antebellum
benevolence and reform movements. To Protestants, many elements of Catholicism
seemed superstitious and even subversive. They rejected the Catholic doctrine
of transubstantiation, which held that the bread and wine consecrated by the
priest during mass literally turned into the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
They condemned as idolatry the Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary and the
saints. They regarded Catholic nuns and convents as threats to the new ideals
of womanhood and domesticity. They found it amiss that Catholics laymen had no
role in governing their own parishes and dioceses, entrusting that
responsibility entirely to priests and bishops. But the worst fears of
Protestants fastened on what they saw as the political dangers posed by
Catholics, especially immigrants. Alarmed as Irish and German settlers poured
into the West, Lyman Beecher warned that “the world has never witnessed such a
rush of dark-minded population from one country to another, as is now leaving
Europe and dashing upon our shores.” Beecher foresaw a sinister plot hatched by
the pope to snuff out American liberty. For what else would follow in a nation
overwhelmed by Catholicism, “a religion which never prospered but in alliance
with despotic government, has always been and still is the inflexible enemy of
liberty of conscience and free enquiry, and at this moment is the main stay of
the battle against republican institutions?” Beecher warned that “the world has
never witnessed such a rush of dark-minded population from one country to
another, as is now leaving Europe and dashing upon our shores.” Evangelical
missionaries dispatched abroad also fueled anti-Catholic sentiment at home.
Their reports from the mission field, widely circulated in religious magazines,
regaled readers with accounts of clashes with Catholic missionaries and
ridiculed Catholic beliefs and rituals. Among them was Isaac Bird, who became a
missionary in present-day Lebanon: he charged Catholic missionaries there with
scheming to get him in trouble with local authorities and to prevent him from distributing
Bibles. And he blamed the Catholic lay people in the Middle East for
discouraging the conversion of Jews and Muslims by practicing so “corrupt” a
form of Christianity. It was all the more appalling to evangelicals, then, that
some Protestants found Catholic teachings appealing. So attractive that some
57,000 converted to Catholicism in the thirty years after 1830. In response to
those defections, many Protestants, believing that converts were drawn by the
artistic beauties of Catholic worship, began to include in their own churches
recognizably Catholic elements, such as the symbol of the cross, the use of
candles and flowers, organ and choir music, stained glass windows, and Gothic
architecture. One such church was none other than Lyman Beecher's “Stone Jug,”
the Hanover Street Congregational Church in Boston. Other Protestants attacked
Catholicism directly. Writing under the name “Maria Monk,” a team of
evangelical ministers produced a lurid account of life in a convent, replete
with sex orgies involving priests and nuns and a cellar planted with dead
babies. Published in 1836, it outsold every other book except Uncle Tom's Cabin
in the years before the Civil War. And with anti-Catholic sentiment running so
high, predictably, there was violence. In 1834 a mob in Charlestown,
Massachusetts burned a convent to the ground. The sisters and their students
escaped injury, but during the summer of 1844 in Philadelphia, two separate
outbreaks of anti-Catholic violence left 14 people dead, as well as two churches
and three dozen homes in smoldering ruins. Most antebellum Protestants condoned
neither violence against Catholics nor the later nativist movement of the
1850s. But even liberal Protestants mistrusted the religion of Rome: in 1821
the Unitarian John Adams asked Thomas Jefferson whether “a free government
[can] possibly exist with a Roman Catholic religion.” Anti-Catholicism had
emerged as a defining feature of American Protestant identity, and the
alienation of the two groups ran deep, enduring far into the twentieth century.
Visionaries
Increasingly hostile to Roman Catholics, evangelicals
also stood at odds with other groups in antebellum America who envisioned new
ways of improving individuals and society. Although often expressing optimism
about the prospects for human betterment, these other reformers—Unitarians and
Transcendentalists, socialists and communitarians—had little else in common
with evangelicals.
The Unitarian Contribution
During the opening decades of the nineteenth century the
religious division among Americans that produced the fiercest debates pitted
evangelicals against deists, Unitarians, and other rational Christians. A
majority only in eastern Massachusetts, Unitarians denied the divinity of Jesus
while affirming the ability and responsibility of humankind to follow his moral
teachings. Disdainful of the emotionalism of revivals, they were also inclined
to interpret the Bible broadly rather than literally. To most Americans, such
views were so suspect that the Presidents who adhered to Unitarianism—John
Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams—did not wish to publicize their
beliefs. Despite their many differences, Unitarians shared with evangelicals
esteem for the power of human agency and a commitment to the goal of social
betterment.
Small though their numbers were, Unitarians made large
contributions to the cause of reform. Among their ranks was Dorothea Dix, a
Boston schoolteacher who took the lead in creating state-supported asylums to
treat the mentally ill; Samuel Gridley Howe, who promoted education for the
blind and the deaf; and Horace Mann, who strove to give greater access to
public schooling to children of poor and working-class families.
From Unitarianism to Transcendentalism
A new philosophic outlook -transcendentalism blossomed in
the mid-1830s, when a number of Unitarian clergy such as George Ripley and
Ralph Waldo Emerson resigned their pulpits, loudly protesting the church's
teachings. The new “Transcendentalist Club” attracted a small following among other
discontented Boston intellectuals, including Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott,
and Orestes Brownson. Transcendentalism emphasized feeling over reason, seeking
a spiritual communion with nature. By transcend they meant to go beyond or to
rise above—specifically above reason and beyond the material world. As part of
creation, every human being contained a spark of divinity, Emerson avowed.
Transcendentalists also shared in Romanticism's glorification of the
individual. “Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string,” Emerson
advised. If freed from the constraints of traditional authority, the individual
had infinite potential. Like the devout at Finney's revivals, who sought to
improve themselves and society, listeners who flocked to Emerson's lectures
were infused with the spirit of optimistic reform. In the summer of 1858
members of the cultural Saturday Club of Boston made an excursion to the
Adirondacks to observe nature. In Philosopher's Camp, painted by William J.
Stillman, who organized the expedition, a group on the left dissects a fish
under the supervision of the famous scientist Louis Agassiz, while on the right
others practice firing rifles. Symbolically, Ralph Waldo Emerson stands alone
in the center of the painting in a contemplative mood. As the currents of
Romanticism percolated through American society, the country's literature came
of age. In 1820 educated Americans still tended to ape the fashions of Europe
and to read British books. But as the population grew, education increased, and
the country's literary market expanded; American writers looked with greater
interest at the customs and character of their own society. Emerson's address
“The American Scholar” (1837) constituted a declaration of literary
independence. “Our long dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of
other lands draws to a close,” he proclaimed. “Events, actions arise, that must
be sung, that will sing themselves.” Many writers of the American Renaissance
betrayed a concern that the advance of civilization, with its smoke-belching
factories and crowded urban centers, might destroy both the natural simplicity
of the land and the liberty of the individual. A compelling commentator on
those themes was Henry David Thoreau, who became part of Emerson's circle. In
1845 he built a cabin on the edge of Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts,
living there in relative solitude for 16 months to demonstrate the advantages
of self-reliance. In Walden (1854) Thoreau argued that only in nature could one
find true independence. By living simply, one could master oneself and the
world. He denounced Americans' frantic competition for material goods and
wealth: “Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul,” Thoreau
maintained. Trapped by property, possessions, and the market, “the mass of men
lead lives of quiet desperation.” Thoreau's individualism was so extreme that
he rejected any institution that contradicted his personal sense of right. “The
only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I
think right,” he wrote in his essay “On Civil Disobedience.” Voicing the
anti-institutional impulse of Romanticism, he took individualism to its
antisocial extreme. In contrast to Thoreau's exclusiveness, Walt Whitman was
all-inclusive, embracing American society in its infinite variety. A journalist
and laborer in the New York City area, Whitman was inspired by the common
people, whose “manners, speech, dress, friendships … are unrhymed poetry.” In
taking their measure in Leaves of Grass (1855), he pioneered a new, modern form
of poetry, unconcerned with meter and rhyme and filled with frank imagery and
sexual references. Whitman, like the Transcendentalists, exalted the emotions,
nature, and the individual, endowing these ideas with a joyous, democratic
spirit. More brooding souls were Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, two
authors who did not share the Transcendentalists' sunny optimism. Hawthorne
wrote of the power of the past to shape future generations. In The Scarlet
Letter (1850), set in New England's Puritan era, Hawthorne probed the
sufferings of a woman who bore an illegitimate child as well as the hypocrisy
of the Puritan neighbors who condemned her. Herman Melville's dark masterpiece,
Moby-Dick (1851), drew on his youthful experiences aboard a whaling ship. The
novel's Captain Ahab relentlessly drives his ship in pursuit of the great white
whale Moby-Dick. In Melville's telling, Ahab becomes a powerful symbol of
American character: the prototype of the ruthless businessman despoiling
nature's resources in his pursuit of success. Ahab is Emerson's self-reliant
man, but in him, self-reliance is transformed into a monomania that eventually
destroys his ship, its crew, and him. But with so many opportunities opening
before them, most Americans were not attuned to searching criticism. They
preferred to celebrate, with Emerson, the glories of democracy and the quest
for self-improvement.
Utopian Communities
Both evangelicals and Unitarians focused their early
reform efforts on improving individuals. But some antebellum believers,
followers of both secular and religious faiths, sought to remake society at
large by forming communities intended as examples to the rest of the world. Even
some Transcendentalists attempted a utopian venture. During the early 1840s
Emerson's friend George Ripley organized Brook Farm, a community near Boston
where members could live “a more wholesome and simple life than can be led
amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions.” Margaret Fuller and, even
more surprisingly, Nathaniel Hawthorne, lived and labored there for a time,
but, predictably, these Romantic individualists could not sustain the group
cooperation essential for success. Some secular thinkers shared the
Transcendentalists' view that competition, inequality, and acquisitiveness were
corrupting American society. Among those critics were socialists, and their
goal was to defend the interests of American workers from the ravages of
industrialization. The most radical voice raised in their behalf belonged to
Thomas Skidmore: in 1829 he published The Rights of Man to Property, which
compared workers laboring for a daily wage to slaves and demanded that the
government confiscate private property and redistribute it equally. More
influential was Robert Owen, the unlikely founder of America's first socialist
community. A Welsh industrialist who had made a fortune manufacturing textiles,
Owen then turned to realizing his vision of a just society—one in which
property was held in common and work equally shared. Such a benign social
environment, he believed, would foster tolerant, rational human beings capable
of self-government. What better place than America to make this dream come
true? Initially, Owen received a warm reception. John Quincy Adams not only
attended both lectures that Owen delivered at the Capitol but also displayed a
model of his proposed community in the White House. A few months later about
900 volunteers flocked to Owen's community at New Harmony, Indiana. Alas, most
lacked the skills and commitment to make it a success, and bitter factions soon
split the settlement. Owen made matters worse by announcing that he rejected
both the authenticity of the Bible and the institution of marriage. New Harmony
dissolved in 1827, but Owen's principles inspired nearly 20 other short-lived
experiments. Owen's followers coined the term “socialism,” but it was Charles
Fourier, a French theorist, whose ideas interested even more Americans in
collectivist communities during the 1840s. His disciples in the United States,
most notably, Albert Brisbane, founded nearly 30 planned communities devoted to
the principle that work should be satisfying and socially useful. But again,
schisms ensured that none survived for more than a dozen years. The United
States proved to be a poor proving-ground for socialist experiments. Wages were
too high and land too cheap for such communities to interest most Americans.
And individualism was too strong to create a commitment to cooperative action.
Communities founded by believers in religious rather than secular faiths proved
far more enduring. Their common spiritual convictions muted individualism, and
their charismatic leaders held divisions at bay. Among the most successful of
these religiously based communal groups were the Shakers. Ann Lee, the
illiterate daughter of an English blacksmith, believed that God had a dual
nature, part male and part female, and that her own life would reveal the
feminine side of the divinity, just as Christ had revealed the masculine. In
1774 she led a small band of disciples to America. Her followers sometimes
shook in the fervent public demonstration of their faith—hence the name
Shakers. As the Second Great Awakening crested, recruits from revivals swelled
Shaker ranks, and their new adherents founded about 20 villages. Members held
the community's property in common, worked hard, and lived simply. Convinced
that the end of the world was at hand and that there was no need to perpetuate
the human race, Shakers practiced celibacy. Men and women normally worked
apart, ate at separate tables in silence, entered separate doorways, and had
separate living quarters. Shakers also accorded women unusual authority and
equality. Elders typically assigned tasks by gender, with women performing
household chores and men laboring in the fields, but leadership of the church
was split equally between men and women. By the mid–nineteenth century a
majority of members were female. Lacking any natural increase, membership began
to decline after 1850, from a peak of about 6,000 members. John Humphrey Noyes,
a revival convert of Charles Finney, also set out to alter the relationship
between the sexes, though in a markedly different way. While many evangelicals
believed that men and women should strive for moral perfection, Noyes announced
that he had actually reached this blessed state. Settling in Putney, Vermont,
and, after 1848, in Oneida, New York, Noyes set out to create a community
organized on his religious ideals. In pursuit of greater freedom, Noyes
preached the doctrine of “complex marriage.” Commune members could have sexual
relations with one another but only with the approval of the community and
after a searching examination of the couple's motives. Noyes eventually
undertook experiments in planned reproduction by selecting “scientific”
combinations of parents to produce morally perfect children. Under his
charismatic leadership the Oneida Community grew to more than 200 members in
1851. But in 1879 an internal dispute drove him from power, and without his guiding
hand the community fell apart. In 1881 its members reorganized as a business
enterprise.
The Mormon Experience
The most spectacularly successful antebellum religious
community—one that mushroomed into a denomination whose followers now number in
the millions around the world—is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. The Mormons, as they are generally known, took their rise from the
visions of a young man named Joseph Smith in Palmyra, in western New York,
where the religious fires of revivalism often flared. The son of a poor farmer,
Smith was robust, charming, almost hypnotic in his appeal. In 1827, at the age
of only 22, he announced that he had discovered and translated a set of golden
tablets on which was written the Book of Mormon. The tablets told the story of
a band of Hebrews who in biblical times journeyed to America, splitting into
two groups, the Nephites and Lamanites. The Nephites established a Christian
civilization, only to be exterminated by the Lamanites, whose descendants were
said to be the Indians of the Americas. Seeking to reestablish the true church,
Smith gathered a group of devoted followers. The Mormon temple at Nauvoo,
Illinois, was adorned with this sun stone and other celestial carvings drawn
from a dream vision by Joseph Smith. The image resembles some of the
astronomical symbols popularized by the Masons. Like nineteenth-century
evangelicalism, Mormonism proclaimed that salvation was available to all.
Mormon culture also upheld the middle-class values of hard work, thrift, and
self-control. It partook of the optimistic, materialist attitudes of American
society. And by teaching that Christ would return to rule the earth, it shared
in the hope of a coming millennial kingdom. Yet Mormonism was less an outgrowth
of evangelicalism than of the primitive gospel movement, which sought to
reestablish the ancient church. In restoring what Smith called “the ancient
order of things,” he created a theocracy uniting church and state,
re-established biblical priesthoods and titles, and adopted temple rituals. Like
Roman Catholics, the Mormons drew bitter opposition—and armed attacks. Smith's
unorthodox teachings provoked persecution wherever he and his followers went,
first to Ohio and then to Missouri. Mob violence finally hounded him out of
Missouri in 1839. Smith then established a new holy city, which he named
Nauvoo, located on the Mississippi River in Illinois. Reinforced by a steady
stream of converts from Britain, Nauvoo became the largest city in Illinois,
with a population of 10,000 by the mid-1840s. There, Smith introduced the most
distinctive features of Mormon theology, including baptism for the dead,
eternal marriage, and polygamy, or plural marriage. As a result, Mormonism
increasingly diverged from traditional Christianity and became a distinct new
religion. To bolster his authority as a prophet, Smith established a theocratic
political order under which church leaders controlled political offices and
governed the community, with Smith as mayor. Neighboring residents, alarmed by
the Mormons' growing political power and reports that church leaders were
practicing polygamy, demanded that Nauvoo's charter be revoked and the church
suppressed. In 1844, while in jail for destroying the printing press of
dissident Mormons in Nauvoo, Smith was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob. In 1846
the Mormons abandoned Nauvoo, and the following year Brigham Young, Smith's
successor, led them westward to Utah.
Radical Reform
Late in the fall of 1834 Lyman Beecher was in the midst
of his continuing efforts to “overturn and overturn” on behalf of the kingdom
of God. He had left Boston for Cincinnati to assume leadership of Lane
Seminary. The school had everything that an institution for training ministers
to convert the West needed—everything, that is, except students. In October
1834 all but 8 of Lane's 100 scholars had departed after months of bitter
fighting with Beecher and the trustees over the issue of abolition. Beecher
knew the source of his troubles: a scruffy, magnetic convert of Finney's
revivals named Theodore Dwight Weld. Weld had fired up his classmates over the
need to end slavery immediately. In doing so, he echoed the arguments of
William Lloyd Garrison, whose abolitionist writings had sent shock waves across
the entire nation. Indeed, Beecher's troubles at Lane Seminary provided only
one example of how the flames of reform could spread along paths not
anticipated by those who had kindled them.
The Beginnings of the Abolitionist Movement
William Lloyd Garrison symbolized the transition from a
moderate antislavery movement to the more militant abolitionism of the 1830s. A
sober, religious youngster deeply influenced by his Baptist mother, Garrison in
the 1820s edited a newspaper sympathetic to many of the new reforms. In 1829 he
was enlisted in the antislavery cause by Benjamin Lundy, a Quaker who edited a
Baltimore antislavery newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. Calling
for a gradual end to slavery, Lundy supported colonization, hoping to overcome
southern fears of emancipation by transporting free black Americans to Africa. Garrison
went to Baltimore to help edit Lundy's paper, and for the first time he
encountered the opinions of free African Americans. To his surprise, Garrison
discovered that most of them strongly opposed the colonization movement as
proslavery and antiblack. Under their influence, Garrison soon developed views
far more radical than Lundy's. Within a year of moving to Baltimore the young
firebrand was convicted of libel and imprisoned. On his release Garrison
hurried back to Boston, determined to publish a new kind of antislavery
journal. On January 1, 1831, the first issue of The Liberator appeared, and
abolitionism was born. In appearance the bespectacled Garrison seemed frail,
almost mousy. But in print, he was abrasive, withering, and uncompromising. “On
this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation,” he
proclaimed. “I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not
retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.” Repudiating gradual emancipation
and embracing “immediatism,” Garrison insisted that slavery end at once. He
denounced colonization as a racist, antiblack movement and upheld the principle
of racial equality. To those who suggested that slaveowners should be
compensated for freeing their slaves, Garrison was firm. Southerners ought to
be convinced by “moral suasion” to renounce slavery as a sin. Virtue was its
own reward. Garrison attracted the most attention, but other abolitionists
spoke with equal conviction. Wendell Phillips, from a socially prominent Boston
family, held listeners spellbound with his speeches. Lewis Tappan and his
brother Arthur, two New York City silk merchants, boldly placed their wealth
behind a number of humanitarian causes, including abolitionism. James G.
Birney, an Alabama slaveholder, converted to abolitionism after wrestling with
his conscience, and Angelina and Sarah Grimké, the daughters of a South
Carolina planter, left their native state to speak against the institution. And
there was Angelina's future husband, Theodore Weld, the restless student at
Lane Seminary who had fallen so dramatically under Garrison's influence. To
abolitionists, slavery was a moral, not an economic, question. The institution
seemed a contradiction of the principle of the American Revolution that all
human beings had been created with natural rights. Then, too, it went against
the Romantic spirit of the age, which celebrated the individual's freedom and
self-reliance. Abolitionists condemned slavery because of the breakup of
marriages and families by sale, the harsh punishment of the lash, slaves' lack
of access to education, and the sexual abuse of black women. Most of all, they
denounced slavery as outrageously contrary to Christian teaching. As one Ohio
antislavery paper declared: “We believe slavery to be a sin, always,
everywhere, and only, sin—sin, in itself.” So persistent were abolitionists in
their religious objections that they forced the churches to face the question
of slavery head-on. In the 1840s the Methodist and Baptist churches each split
into northern and southern organizations over the issue.
The Spread of Abolitionism
After helping organize the New England Anti-Slavery
Society in 1832, Garrison joined with Lewis Tappan and Theodore Weld the
following year to establish a national organization, the American Anti-Slavery
Society. It coordinated a loosely affiliated network of state and local groups.
During the years before the Civil War, perhaps 200,000 northerners belonged to
an abolitionist society. Abolitionists were concentrated in the East,
especially New England, and in areas that had been settled by New Englanders,
such as western New York and northern Ohio. The movement was not strong in
cities or among businesspeople and workers. Most abolitionists were young,
being generally in their 20s and 30s when the movement began, and had grown up
in rural areas and small towns in middle-class families. Intensely religious,
many had been profoundly affected by the revivals of the Second Great
Awakening. More and more they came to feel that slavery was the fundamental
cause of the Republic's degraded condition. Theodore Weld was cut from this
mold. After enrolling in Lane Seminary in 1833 he promoted immediate
abolitionism among his fellow students. When Lyman Beecher assumed the Lane
presidency a year later, he confronted a student body dominated by committed
abolitionists, impatient of any position that stopped short of Garrison's
immediatism. The radicalism of Lane students was also made clear in their
commitment to racial equality. Unlike some abolitionists, who opposed slavery
but disdained blacks as inferior, Lane students mingled freely with
Cincinnati's free black community. Alarmed by rumors in the summer of 1834 that
the town's residents intended to demolish the school, Beecher and Lane's
trustees forbade any discussion of slavery on campus, restricted contact with
the black community, and ordered students to return to their studies. “Who that
has an opinion and a soul will enter L. Sem now?” one rebel asked. “Who can do
it without degrading himself?” All except a few left the school and enrolled at
Oberlin College. That debt-ridden institution agreed to their demands for
guaranteeing freedom of speech, admitting black students, and hiring Charles
Finney as professor of theology. But Finney fared no better than Beecher with
the Lane rebels. In the end, he, too, concluded that reform generated discord,
distracting Christians from the greater good of promoting revivals. Both men
conceived of sin in terms of individual immorality, not unjust social
institutions. To the abolitionists, however, America could never become a godly
nation until slavery was abolished. “Revivals, moral Reform, etc. will remain
stationary until the temple is cleansed,” Weld bluntly concluded. Free African
Americans, who made up the majority of subscribers to Garrison's Liberator,
provided important support and leadership for the movement. Frederick Douglass
assumed the greatest prominence. Having escaped from slavery in Maryland, he
became an eloquent critic of its evils. Initially a follower of Garrison,
Douglass eventually broke with him and started his own newspaper in Rochester.
Other important black abolitionists included Martin Delany, William Wells
Brown, William Still, and Sojourner Truth. Aided by many other African
Americans, these men and women battled against racial discrimination in the
North as well as slavery in the South. A network of antislavery sympathizers
also developed in the North to convey runaway slaves to Canada and freedom.
Although not as extensive or as tightly organized as contemporaries claimed,
the Underground Railroad hid fugitives and transported them northward from one
station to the next. Free African Americans, who were more readily trusted by
wary slaves, played a leading role in the Underground Railroad. One of its most
famous conductors was Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave who repeatedly returned
to the South and eventually escorted to freedom more than 200 slaves.
Opponents and Divisions
The drive for immediate abolition faced massive obstacles
within American society. With slavery increasingly important to the South's
economy, Southerners forced opponents of slavery to flee the region. In the
North, where racism was equally entrenched, abolitionism provoked bitter
resistance. Even abolitionists such as Garrison treated blacks
paternalistically, contending that they should occupy a subordinate place in
the antislavery movement. On occasion, northern resistance turned violent. A
hostile Boston mob seized Garrison in 1835 and paraded him with a rope around
his body before he was finally rescued. Another anti-abolitionist mob burned
down the headquarters of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. And
in 1837 in Alton, Illinois, Elijah Lovejoy was murdered when he tried to
protect his printing press from an angry crowd. The leaders of these mobs were
not from the bottom of society but, as one of their victims noted, were
“gentlemen of property and standing.” Prominent leaders in the community, they
reacted vigorously to the threat that abolitionists posed to their power and
prosperity and to the established order. But abolitionists were also hindered
by divisions among reformers. At Oberlin College Charles Finney preferred
revivalism over Theodore Weld's abolitionism. Within another decade Lyman
Beecher would see his daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe write the most successful
piece of antislavery literature in the nation's history, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Even
the abolitionists themselves splintered, shaken by the opposition they
encountered and unable to agree on the most effective response. More
conservative reformers wanted to work within established institutions, using
the churches and political action to end slavery. But for Garrison and his
followers, the mob violence demonstrated that slavery was only part of a deeper
national disease, whose cure required the overthrow of American institutions
and values. By the end of the decade Garrison had worked out a program for the
total reform of society. He embraced perfectionism and pacifism, denounced the
clergy, urged members to leave the churches, and called for an end to all
government. Condemning the Constitution as proslavery—“a covenant with death
and an agreement with hell”—he publicly burned a copy one July 4th. No person
of conscience, he argued, could vote or otherwise participate in the corrupt
political system. This platform was radical enough on all counts, but the final
straw for Garrison's opponents was his endorsement of women's rights as an
inseparable part of abolitionism.
The Women's Rights Movement
Women faced many disadvantages in American society. They
were kept out of most jobs, denied political rights, and given only limited
access to education beyond the elementary grades. When a woman married, her
husband became the legal representative of the marriage and gained complete
control of her property. If a marriage ended in divorce, the husband was
awarded custody of the children. Any unmarried woman was made the ward of a
male relative. When abolitionists divided over the issue of female
participation, women found it easy to identify with the situation of slaves,
since both were victims of male tyranny. Sarah and Angelina Grimké took up the
cause of women's rights after they were criticized for speaking to audiences
that included men as well as women. Sarah responded with Letters on the
Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes (1838), arguing that women
deserved the same rights as men. Abby Kelly, another abolitionist, remarked
that women “have good cause to be grateful to the slave,” for in “striving to
strike his irons off, we found most surely, that we were manacled ourselves.” Two
abolitionists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, launched the women's
rights movement after they were forced to sit behind a curtain at a world
antislavery convention in London. In 1848 Stanton and Mott organized a
conference in Seneca Falls, New York, that attracted about a hundred
supporters. The meeting issued a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after the
Declaration of Independence, that began:
“All men and women are created equal.” The Seneca Falls convention called for
educational and professional opportunities for women, laws giving them control
of their property, recognition of legal equality, and repeal of laws awarding
the father custody of the children in divorce. The most controversial proposal,
and the only resolution that did not pass unanimously, was one demanding the
right to vote. The Seneca Falls convention established the arguments and the
program for the women's rights movement for the remainder of the century. In
response several states gave women greater control over their property, and a
few made divorce easier or granted women the right to sue in courts. But
disappointments and defeats outweighed these early victories. Still, many of
the important leaders in the crusade for women's rights that emerged after the
Civil War had already taken their places at the forefront of the movement. They
included Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and—as Lyman Beecher by now
must have expected, one of his daughters—Isabella Beecher Hooker.
The Schism of 1840
It was Garrison's position on women's rights that finally
split antislavery ranks already divided over other aspects of his growing
radicalism. The showdown came in 1840 at the national meeting of the American
Anti-Slavery Society, when delegates debated whether women could hold office in
the organization. Some of Garrison's opponents favored women's rights but
opposed linking the question to the slavery issue, insisting that it would
drive off potential supporters. By packing the convention, Garrison carried the
day. His opponents, led by Lewis Tappan, resigned to found the rival American
and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The schism of 1840 lessened the influence of
abolitionism as a reform movement. Although abolitionism heightened moral
concern about slavery, it failed to convert the North to its program, and its
supporters remained a tiny minority. Despite the considerable courage of its
leaders, the movement lacked a realistic, long-range plan for eliminating such
a deeply entrenched institution. Abolitionism demonstrated the limits of
voluntary persuasion and individual conversions as a solution to deeply rooted
social problems.
Reform Shakes the Party System
The crusading idealism of revivalists and reformers
inevitably collided with the hard reality that society could not be perfected
by converting individuals. Several movements, including those to establish
public schools and erect asylums, had operated within the political system from
the beginning. But a growing number of other frustrated reformers were
abandoning the principle of voluntary persuasion and looking to government
coercion to achieve their goals.
The Turn toward Politics
Politicians did not particularly welcome the new
interest. Because the Whig and Democratic parties both drew on evangelical and
nonevangelical voters, heated moral debates over the harmful effects of drink
or the evils of slavery threatened to detach regular party members from their
old loyalties and disrupt each party's unity. The strong opposition of German
and Irish immigrants to temperance stimulated antiforeign sentiment among
reformers and further divided both party coalitions, particularly the
Democrats. “The temperance question is playing havock in the old party lines,”
commented one Indiana politician. The issue of abolition seemed even more
disruptive. Because women could not vote, they felt excluded when the
temperance and abolitionist movements turned to electoral action to accomplish
their goals. By the 1840s female reformers increasingly demanded the right to
vote as the means to change society. Nor were men blind to what was at stake:
one reason they so strongly resisted female suffrage was because it would give
women real power. The political parties could resist the women's suffrage
movement, because most of its advocates lacked the right to vote. Less easily
put off were temperance reformers. Although drinking had significantly declined
in American society by 1840, it had hardly been eliminated. After 1845 the
arrival of large numbers of German and Irish immigrants, who were accustomed to
consuming alcohol, made voluntary prohibition even more remote. In response
temperance advocates proposed state laws that would outlaw the manufacture and
sale of alcoholic beverages. Party
leaders tried to dodge the question of prohibition, since large numbers of
Whigs and Democrats were found on both sides of the issue. Temperance advocates
countered by seeking pledges from candidates to support a prohibitory law. To
win additional recruits, temperance leaders adopted techniques used in
political campaigns, including house-to-house canvasses, parades and processions,
bands and singing, banners, picnics, and mass rallies. The movement's first
major triumph came in 1851. The Maine Law, as it was known, authorized search
and seizure of private property in that state and provided stiff penalties for
selling liquor. In the next few years a number of states enacted similar laws,
although most were struck down by the courts or later repealed. Prohibition
remained a controversial political issue throughout the century. Although
prohibition was temporarily defeated, the issue badly disrupted the Whig and
Democratic parties. It greatly increased party switching and brought to the
polls a large number of new voters, including many “wets” who wanted to
preserve their right to drink. By dissolving the ties between so many voters and
their parties, the temperance issue played a major role in the eventual
collapse of the Jacksonian party system in the 1850s.
Abolitionism and the Party System
Slavery proved even more divisive. In 1835 abolitionists
distributed more than a million pamphlets, mostly in the South, through the
Post Office. A wave of excitement swept the South when the first batches
arrived addressed to white southerners. Former senator Robert Hayne led a
Charleston mob that burned sacks of U.S. mail containing abolitionist
literature, and postmasters in other southern cities refused to deliver the
material. The Jackson administration allowed southern states to censor the
mail, leading abolitionists to protest that their civil rights had been
violated. In reaction, the number of antislavery societies in the North nearly
tripled. With access to the mails impaired, abolitionists began flooding
Congress with petitions against slavery. Asserting that Congress had no power
over the institution, angry southern representatives demanded action, and the
House in response adopted the so-called gag rule in 1836. It automatically
tabled without consideration any petition dealing with slavery. But southern
leaders had made a tactical blunder. The gag rule allowed abolitionists not
only to attack slavery but also to speak out as defenders of white civil
liberties. The appeal of the antislavery movement was broadened, and in 1844
the House finally repealed the controversial rule. Many abolitionists outside
Garrison's extreme circle began to feel that an antislavery third party offered
a more effective means of attacking slavery. In 1840 these political
abolitionists founded the Liberty party and nominated for President James
Birney, a former slaveholder who had converted to abolitionism. Birney received
only 7,000 votes, but the Liberty party was the seed from which a stronger
antislavery political movement would grow. From 1840 onward abolitionism's
importance would be in the political arena rather than as a voluntary reform
organization. The ferment of reform during the decades from 1820 to 1850
reflected a multitude of attempts to deal with transformations working through
not just the United States but also Europe. Americans crowded the docks of New
York City eagerly awaiting the latest installment of Charles Dickens's novels
from England, tales often set amid urban slums and dingy factories. European
middle classes embraced the home as a domestic refuge, as did their
counterparts in America. The “benevolent empire” of American reform organizations
drew inspiration from similar British campaigns. Robert Owen launched his
utopian reforms in New Lanark, Scotland, before his ideas were tried out at New
Harmony, Indiana, and disciples of the French socialist Charles Fourier founded
communities in the United States. Abolition was potentially the most dangerous
of these trans-Atlantic reforms because slavery was so deeply and profitably
intertwined with the industrial system. Slave labor produced cotton for the
textile factories of New England, Great Britain, and Europe; plantation
economies supplied the sugar, rice, tea, and coffee that were a part of
European and American diets. Revolutionary France had abolished slavery in
1794, but Napoleon reinstated it, along with the slave trade. Great Britain
outlawed the trade in 1808 (as did the United States) and then freed nearly
800,000 slaves in its colonies in 1834. Any move for emancipation in the United
States seemed out of the question, and as late as 1840 abolition lacked the
power to threaten the political system. Birney's small vote, coupled with the
disputes between the two national antislavery societies, encouraged political
leaders to believe that the party system had turned back this latest threat of
sectionalism. But the growing northern concern about slavery highlighted
differences between the two sections. Despite the strength of evangelicalism in
the South, the reform impulse spawned by the revivals found little support
there, since reform movements were discredited by their association with
abolitionism. The party system confronted the difficult challenge of holding
together sections that, although sharing much, were also diverging in important
ways. To the residents of both sections, the South increasingly appeared to be
a unique society with its own distinctive way of life.
Chapter Overview
Revivalism and the Social Order
The reform movements drew upon two intellectual developments: revivalism and romanticism. The Second Great Awakening represented the final repudiation of Calvinism and the doctrine of predestination as a majority viewpoint among religious leaders. In their place, revivalists led by Charles Grandison Finney preached the doctrine of salvation available to all, if only sinners would exercise their free will and choose it. Spurred on by this optimistic message, revivalists eventually endorsed the ideals of perfectionism (that individuals and society could become perfect) and the belief in millennialism (the reign of a thousand years of peace on earth prophesied in the Bible). Finney also adopted "new measures" to convert sinners--measures that preachers had first developed in frontier camp meetings. Among the most important of these practices was the active inclusion of women in the revivals and church work. Finney's revivals helped people adjust to the new market economy and the pressures they experienced in their daily lives by giving them the internal discipline necessary to succeed in the new competitive economy. The revivals also strengthened the American belief in individualism and equality.
Women's Sphere
Women made up the greater number of converts at these revivals. Industrialization and the market revolution created a new middle class that embraced the doctrine of privacy, separating the home and family from society. As a result, women's roles in society during this period became increasingly centered on these private realms, a process celebrated by the ideal of domesticity. Denied employment opportunities and political rights, and often receiving little emotional support within their domestic circle, women consequently turned to religion and reform as ways to shape society. They also reached out to other women, joining together in benevolent organizations, church groups, and prayer meetings, in a common experience of "sisterhood." One significant consequence of these changes within middle-class families was the adoption of new techniques to assure the success of their children, including the reduction of family size, a greater emphasis on education, and the growing prevalence of equal inheritance among children.
American Romanticism
Romanticism also stimulated the quest for perfectionism. An intellectual movement that began in Europe, romanticism emphasized the unlimited potential of each individual. Like the revivals, it viewed emotion as a source of truth. Romanticism stimulated the emergence of a distinct American literature that wrestled with questions about the source of truth and the clash between the individual and society.Ralph Waldo Emerson was the leading romantic thinker of Jacksonian America. He called for a distinctive national literature and promoted Transcendentalism, an intensely individualistic philosophical movement that emphasized human dignity and the power of emotion. The Romantic Movement produced a number of major writers who explored, with uniquely American voices, some of the complexities and contradictions of American culture.
The Age of Reform
Some reformers turned to utopian communities in order to create a model society for the rest of the world to follow. Religious doctrine shaped many of these communities, such as the Shakers and the Oneida settlement; others, such as New Harmony, were secular and socialist in their orientation. All shared the belief in humans' ability to perfect their character and remove evil from society. Other reformers turned to humanitarian movements that sought to save individuals by combating social evils, which they identified with sin. Movements such as temperance, educational reform, the effort to establish asylums for the mentally ill, all gained significant support and typified the approach of perfecting society by reforming individuals.
Abolitionism
In the long run, the most important humanitarian reform movement of the period was abolitionism. William Lloyd Garrison, a Boston editor, established the ideals and program of the abolitionist movement. Viewing slavery as the greatest sin in the Republic, abolitionists called for the immediate end to the institution, and championed rights for African Americans. Other important leaders of the abolitionist movement included Lewis Tappan, James Birney, and Theodore Dwight Weld (Weld quickly clashed with Lyman Beecher when both were at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati). Free African Americans in northern communities also provided an important source of support for the movement. Abolitionism drew on the crusading idealism of the revivals and the ideals of millennialism and perfectionism. Yet unlike many of its contemporary movements, abolitionism attacked powerful groups in American society and championed African Americans in the face of a pervasive racism. In doing so, it precipitated strong and often violent opposition, leaving abolitionists as a small minority of northern society. Nonetheless, abolitionism attracted considerable support from women who actively participated in church work. Eventually, several prominent female abolitionists, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, launched the women's rights movement at the Seneca Falls convention in 1848. Drawing a parallel between the oppression of women and slaves in American society, they called for greater educational and employment opportunities for women, enhanced legal rights in marriage, and--most controversially--the right to vote. The emergence of the women's rights movement reflected the growing internal divisions within the abolitionist movement. In 1840 the movement split into a radical wing, headed by Garrison, and a more conservative wing, led by Tappan, that sought to end slavery through the political process. The anti-Garrisonians founded the Liberty party, the first of several antislavery political parties that would take shape over the next two decades, and nominated James Birney for president.
Reform Shakes the Party System
Increasingly, other reformers also turned to political action. Advocates of temperance, antislavery, and women's rights all sought to achieve their goals by passing legislation. The passage of the first statewide prohibition law in Maine in 1851 prompted the drive to pass similar laws in other states. The intrusion of these moral questions into the political arena increasingly disrupted the two national parties; antislavery especially made it difficult to preserve support in both sections of the country. Although the party system still functioned, these reform movements weakened it considerably, as the political upheaval of the early 1850s would demonstrate.
Review Questions
1. The chapter introduction
tells the story of Lyman Beecher and his offspring to make the point that:
A)
nineteenth-century preachers often stressed the wickedness of American society.
B) while the Beecher
family stood for older values and tried to halt the rapid changes in American
society, other Americans sought to harness change to bring about a more perfect
society.
C) zealous evangelical
Protestants sought to hasten the coming of Christ's kingdom on earth through
diverse strategies for reforming society.
D) the
Transcendentalist Beecher represented the more secular, romantic side of a
quest for an improved society that characterized America in the 1820s and
1830s.
2. Revivalism responded to a
desire:
A) for social order and control
in the new, fast-changing, competitive market economy.
B) for higher pay
and greater social mobility typical of the new frontier entrepreneurs.
C) for the
reaffirmation of fundamental Calvinist beliefs like predestination.
D) for traditional
Unitarian beliefs like the promise of salvation for those who willed it.
3. Evangelical religion proved
strongest:
A) in eastern
cities.
B) on southern
plantations.
C) in isolated
towns on the edge of the frontier.
D) in areas just entering the
market economy.
4. The ideal of domesticity:
A) held that women's sphere was
the home and family.
B) was opposed by
revivalists like Charles Grandison Finney.
C) held that the
government should ignore foreign policy and focus on internal development.
D) stressed the
father's spiritual leadership in the home.
5. With respect to the
middle-class family after 1820, all of the following explain the decline in
family size in general, and in the birth rate in particular, EXCEPT:
A) parents' desire
to improve the standard of living of themselves and their children.
B) use of birth
control methods.
C) middle-class
youth often delayed marriage until young men could support their wives.
D) a view of family, shared with
farmers, that children were economic assets.
6. Romanticism:
A) came from
Europe as part of the Enlightenment.
B) was
incompatible with the doctrines of the revivals.
C) considered emotion as the
source of truth.
D) was a uniquely
American cultural movement.
7. Each of these authors was
influenced by the Romantics' fascination with nature EXCEPT:
A) Henry David
Thoreau.
B) Washington Irving.
C) Herman
Melville.
D) Walt Whitman.
8. The Shaker movement:
A) attempted to replace the competitive
ethos of American society with a purer spiritual unity and group cooperation.
B) gave women very
little authority in the life of the community.
C) supported the
concept of free love.
D) lasted for only
a few years.
9. The experiences of Brook Farm
and New Harmony proved that the United States was not conducive to socialist
experiments because:
A) wages were too
high.
B) land was too
plentiful.
C) the spirit of
individualism was too strong.
D) all of the above.
10. Abolitionism was strongest:
A) in northern
cities.
B) in New England and areas
settled by New Englanders.
C) among
businessmen.
D) among the
elderly.
11. Seneca Falls, New York, was
the site of:
A) John Humphrey
Noyes' utopian community.
B) Charles
Grandison Finney's greatest revival.
C) the first major women's
rights convention.
D) Prudence
Crandall's school for black girls.
12. The abolitionist movement
split in 1840:
A) because of
Garrison's support for black rights.
B) because of
Weld's failure to win over Beecher and Finney.
C) over the issue of women's
rights.
D) over the issue
of mixing religion and politics.
13. What reform movement won
temporary political success through the Maine Law?
A) the antidrinking crusade
B) the movement
for public high schools
C) the campaign
for women's suffrage
D) Robert Owen's
factory reforms at New Harmony, Indiana
14. Which does not belong in a
list of social reforms?
A) Lyman Beecher's call for
transcendentalism
B) John Humphrey
Noyes's Oneida Community
C) Dorothea Dix's
work to promote asylums
D) Horace Mann's
effort to promote public education
15. Who most profoundly raised
the issue of the destructive potential of the values of Romanticism?
A) Herman Melville
B) Lyman Beecher
C) Ralph Waldo
Emerson
D) William Lloyd
Garrison
Practice Test
1. The American Colonization Society helped
to transport blacks from the United States to:
A. the Caribbean.
B. Liberia.
C. Angola.
D. England.
E. Canada.
2. The 1848 Seneca Falls, New York convention
on women's rights:
A. issued a manifesto patterned after the Declaration of
Independence.
B. asserted that women
should have a place in society distinctly different from that of men.
C. refused to allow men
to attend.
D. called on the
government to treat both genders and all races with equality.
E. shied away from
demanding female suffrage, as this was too radical.
3. Reform movements emerged in America in the
mid-nineteenth century in part because of a:
A. pessimistic
assumption of the natural weakness of individuals.
B. desire for social stability and discipline in the face of
change.
C. belief that society
needed to break free from its old traditions.
D. fear that civil war
was going to engulf the nation.
E. declining importance
placed on religious piety.
4. After 1830, which of the following reform
movements began to overshadow the others?
A. antislavery
B. women's rights
C. temperance
D. education
E. rehabilitation
5. Shaker societies:
A. asserted that God was
a female.
B. established most of
its communities in the South.
C. saw women exercise more power than men.
D. first began in the
United States in the 1840s.
E. were eventually
forced to move to Utah.
6. Opponents of abolitionism in the North
believed:
A. abolitionists were
dangerous radicals.
B. the movement would
lead to a war between the North and South.
C. the movement would
lead to a great influx of free blacks into the North.
D. all of the above
E. None of the above
7. The transcendentalist writer Ralph Waldo
Emerson:
A. believed American
thinkers should be allied with European intellectuals.
B. asserted that through nature, individuals could find
personal fulfillment.
C. was a leading critic
of the American political system.
D. asserted that
organized religion served no useful purpose in society.
E. remained a deeply
religious clergyman throughout his life.
8. William Lloyd Garrison believed the
abolitionist movement should:
A. stress the damage that slavery did to blacks rather than
to whites.
B. seek the gradual
elimination of slavery.
C. demand freedom for
slaves, but deny them citizenship.
D. organize slave
rebellions throughout the American South.
E. join forces with the
more established American Colonization Society.
9. The black abolitionist who called for
uncompromising opposition to and a violent overthrow of slavery in his 1829 An
Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World was:
A. William Lloyd
Garrison.
B. Frederick Douglass.
C. Elijah Lovejoy.
D. Benjamin Lundy.
E. David Walker.
10. The Massachusetts reformer who built a
national movement for new methods of treating the mentally ill was:
A. Susan B. Anthony.
B. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton.
C. Lucretia Mott.
D. Angelina Grimke.
E. Dorothea Dix.
11. An
argument for the education of women was that they could not be good
"republican mothers" unless they were educated themselves.
A. True
B. False
12. The American Colonization Society called
for the gradual freeing of slaves and for monetary compensation to their former
owners.
A. True
B. False
13. The philosophy of reform in America drew
heavily from Protestant evangelism.
A. True
B. False
14. The Second Great Awakening succeeded in
restoring to prominence traditional doctrines such as predestination.
A. True
B. False
15. Antislavery and abolition were different
words for the same thing.
A. True
B. False
16. The ________ was the popular name given
to a network of contacts that helped runaway slaves, often guided by fellow
escapees like Harriet Tubman, reach freedom in Canada.
Underground Railroad
17. Much of William Lloyd Garrison's philosophy
can be found in his newspaper, the ________.
Liberator
18. Joseph Smith and Elijah Lovejoy were both
________.
Assassinated
19. The most distinctive feature of the
Shakers was their commitment to ________.
Celibacy
20. Henry David Thoreau advocated the
advantages of self-reliance and denounced material goods and wealth in his
famous work ________.
Walden Pond
21. Walt Whitman's first book of poems was
titled ________.
Leaves of Grass
22. The writer ________ built a cabin on the
edge of Walden Pond in Concord, he lived by himself for 16 months to demonstrate
the advantages of self-reliance.
Henry David Thoreau
23. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the novel
________.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
24. According to the transcendentalists,
________ was the highest human faculty.
Reason
25. The original founder of Mormonism in the
state of ________ was Joseph Smith.
New York
26. Joseph Smith introduced the practice of
________.
Polygamy
27. One of the most striking features of the
Second Great Awakening was the preponderance of ________ who were involved in
it.
Women
28. The pre-Civil War reformer most concerned
about expanding public education was ________, from the state of Massachusetts.
Horace Mann
29. As a result of the ________, the dominant
form of Christianity in America became evangelical Protestantism.
Second Great Awakening
30. The ________ were a communitarian
religious group founded by a woman and granting women equality and authority.
Shakers
Chapter Test
1. Transcendentalists:
A. rejected European
intellectuals.
B. emphasized feeling over reason
C. argued that emotional
responses inhibited the internal development of individuals.
D. rejected the beliefs
of Romanticism
E. argued for submission
to traditional authority
2. The most noted black abolitionist of the
day was:
A. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
B. William Lloyd
Garrison.
C. Frederick Douglass.
D. Joseph Smith.
E. Benjamin Lundy.
3. During the Second Great Awakening, the
Indian revivalist Handsome Lake called for:
A. the adoption by
Indian tribes of white American culture.
B. an armed Indian
rebellion against white American society.
C. the United States to
live up to its broken treaties with Indian tribes.
D. the return of lands
taken from Indian tribes by the United States.
E. the restoration of traditional Indian culture.
4. The revivalism of the Second Great
Awakening was essentially restricted to white people.
A. True
B. False
5. The Second Great Awakening succeeded in
restoring to prominence traditional doctrines such as predestination.
A. True
B. False
6. The Mormons were forced to abandon their
settlement at Nauvoo due to persecution from neighbors.
A. True
B. False
7. In the early nineteenth century the idea
of colonization, which involved the transporting of free black Americans to
Africa:
A. was strongly opposed by free African Americans as being
proslavery and antiblack
B. was strongly
supported by free African Americans
C. was strongly
supported by William Lloyd Garrison.
D. carried out a
large-scale resettlement of freed slaves.
E. was strongly opposed
by southern white slave owners
8. In the 1830s and 1840s, abolitionists were
divided:
A. by radicals and
moderates within their ranks.
B. over whether or not
to use violence.
C. by calls for northern
and southern separation.
D. over the question of
female equality.
E. All these answers are correct.
9. In the 1840s, the organized movement
against drunkenness in the United States:
A. linked alcohol to crime and poverty.
B. grew largely out of
immigrant communities.
C. was actively opposed
by a large majority of Americans.
D. remained a minor
social movement.
E. spent much of its
time and resources battling evangelical Protestants.
10. Evangelical Protestantism added major
strength to which of the following reforms?
A. temperance
B. education and
rehabilitation
C. women's rights
D. peace
E. abolitionism
11. Which of the following was arguably the
most distinctive feature of Shakerism?
A. the admittance of
women only
B. communal raising of
children
C. polygamy
D. free love
E. complete celibacy
12. Although it sold well, the novel Uncle
Tom's Cabin had little impact on American antislavery attitudes.
A. True
B. False
13. Both Brook Farm and New Harmony were
essentially failures as communal experiments.
A. True
B. False
14. To abolitionist, slavery was a question
of morality, not economics.
A. True
B. False
15. The message of the Second Great Awakening:
A. called for an active and fervent piety.
B. restored the
traditional belief in predestination.
C. incorporated the
belief of skeptical rationalism.
D. found its greatest
number of converts among young men.
E. was rejected by most
women as being retrograde and reactionary.
