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Chapter 12 |
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Social and economic upheaval in the early nineteenth century resulted in religious fervor, moral reform, and sometimes confusion that divided communities and undermined established institutions. Abolitionism, one of the most prominent reform movements of the era, challenged the central facet of southern society and contributed to political conflict and eventually civil war.
The Rise of Evangelicalism
During the early nineteenth century, turmoil was common for American Protestantism. Among evangelical Protestants, revivals were effective tools to increase membership and extend religious values, something deemed absolutely necessary as “infidel” groups like the Catholics and Mormons grew.
The Second Great Awakening: The Frontier Phase
Beginning on the southern frontier, a revival movement known as the Second Great Awakening provided an emotional outlet, a right of passage, and social cohesion for rural communities through camp meetings. Eventually turning instead to “protracted meetings,” the Baptists and Methodists grew in membership and influence in the South during the first half of the 1800s. Though they sometimes created societies to encourage temperance or discourage dueling, southern churches generally shied away from social reform.
The Second Great Awakening in the North
In both New England and upstate New York, evangelical revivals—conducted mostly by Congregationalists or Presbyterians—arose emphasizing free choice and free will in sinners’ conversion to God. The tendency to reform was much more evident and active in the North.
From Revivalism to Reform
The evangelical revivals of the North often spawned middle-class reform movements which emphasized self-improvement for the benefit of the nation. Should the object of reform not wish to improve himself, these reformers were not adverse to stamping out sin and social evil themselves. Some of the social reform efforts spawned by the Second Great Awakening included missionary societies, the American Tract Society, and moral reform groups that targeted drinking, dueling, prostitution, gambling, and irreligious activity on Sunday. The “benevolent empire” was a major cultural force by the 1830s.
Domesticity and Changes in the American Family
Increasingly, reformers celebrated the family, and especially the mother, as important to society. Though women were confined more and more to the domestic circle, their roles within it grew in importance.
Marriage for Love
In the nineteenth century, love became more and more important in choosing a marital partner. Marriages became more egalitarian as wives became companions for their husbands rather than mere servants or possessions. Despite these changes, in law and in cases of conflict between husbands and wives, the husband was still the unchallenged head of the household.
The Cult of Domesticity
The glorification of the role of the wife/mother has been described as the “Cult of Domesticity” or the “Cult of True Womanhood.” The reason behind this new conception of femininity was the increasing division of the working lives of men and women. As industrialism began to grow, men’s place of work began to be separate from the household at the same time that women were being more closely confined within it. The “doctrine of separate spheres” emerged to justify and glorify this new pattern: while men toiled in the harsh world of work, women provided the welcoming, domestic sphere for them to come home to. Middle- and upper-class women in particular gained from these two concepts. For some such women, the domestic ideal sanctioned efforts to expand their activities into the masculine world of work for the purpose of reform. If women were moral and pure enough to be entrusted with the rearing of their children and keeping of the home, then surely they could make the world a better place through their reform.
The Discovery of Childhood
Lower birthrates and smaller families—the result of new forms of birth control and conscious family planning—led parents to place more emphasis on affectionate child rearing rather than just treating children as “small adults.” New customs, fashions, and products went hand in hand with the discovery of childhood.
Institutional Reform
Responsibility for the reform of the individual eventually spread from the family to the larger community and society’s important institutions.
The Extension of Education
Public education developed, especially in the North, under the leadership of reformers such as Horace Mann. Tax money was used to finance new schools, supplementing the informal education that was common in most towns and cities. Reformers believed that schools were especially necessary among poor and immigrant children whose families could not provide them with the proper upbringing. In addition to the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, schools also taught students the Protestant ethic, which, along with compulsory attendance laws, often served to alienate immigrant children from their parents.
Discovering the Asylum
Rejecting the traditional belief that insanity, poverty, and criminality were the result of divine judgment or original sin, reformers worked to rehabilitate those who exhibited deviant behavior. The 1820s and 1830s saw the emergence of state-funded prisons, insane asylums, and poorhouses. In theory, such institutions were meant as a substitute for absent families. In practice, they were far from such an ideal. Dorothea Dix, among others, worked to raise the level of care for these inmates.
Reform Turns Radical
Some of the reformers insisted on reforms so extreme that many of their fellow reformers considered them radical.
Divisions in the Benevolent Empire
Arguments between the adherents of moderate reform and those supporting quicker change split many organizations, including the temperance movement, the American Peace Society, and the antislavery movement. The most prominent anti-slavery group before the 1830s had been the American Colonization Society, but the promise of colonization of Blacks outside of the United States proved inadequate as a step toward abolition. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison revolutionized the abolitionist movement when he began publishing the Liberator.
The Abolitionist Enterprise
Growing out of the evangelical movement, the abolitionist movement succeeded, especially in small and medium-sized towns in the upper North. It faced considerable opposition, sometimes violent, especially near the Mason-Dixon Line. Additionally, there was disagreement within the abolitionist movement itself over the role of the church, the federal government, and women. The Liberty Party was the first attempt by the abolitionist movement to enter the fray of politics as a separate political party.
Black Abolitionists
Free, northern Blacks were active in the abolitionist movement from the beginning. The stories of former slaves were printed as narratives, and escaped slaves were some of the most convincing orators for the antislavery cause. Eventually, conflict arose between Black and White abolitionists, leading to the establishment of a separate Black antislavery movement in the 1830s. In addition to speaking out against slavery, a vital part of the Black antislavery movement was the underground railroad. Though the abolitionist movement did not end slavery, it did bring it to the forefront of public consciousness.
From Abolitionism to Women’s Rights
From the beginning, women served in the abolitionist movement. Seeing similarities between slavery and their own oppression, some women like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton began to work for their own liberation, organizing the first gathering for women’s rights in the United States at Seneca Falls in 1848. The Declaration of Sentiments issued by the convention called for woman suffrage and equality.
Radical Ideas and Experiments
Some Americans in the early to mid-nineteenth century sought a perfect social order and formed utopian socialist communities such as those promoted by Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. The Shakers’ Oneida community was one of the most successful and longest-lasting pre-Civil War utopian experiments. A literary and philosophical movement known as transcendentalism also inspired experimental living arrangements like Brook Farm. Luminaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller all participated in the transcendentalist movement. Other Americans promoted fads such as phrenology, vegetarianism, and spiritualist seances.
Conclusion: Counterpoint on Reform
Hawthorne, in his writing in this period, underlined the observation that the dreams of the reformers promised more than they could deliver and led to a distorted view of human nature and possibilities. Nonetheless, accepting Hawthorne’s interpretation of reform means that no one should do ever anything to try to improve society.
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