Second Great Awakening Dbq

Behind most of the reform movements of the 19th century was a religious revival called the Second Great Awakening which made the United States a religious nation. The Second Great Awakening stressed individual choice in salvation and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and was deeply influenced by the Market Revolution. While many preachers criticize the selfish individualism inherent in free market competition, there was sort of a market for new religions and preachers who would travel the country, drumming up business. Awakening ministers also preached the values of sobriety, industry, and self-discipline, which had become the essence of both the market economy and the impulse for reform. However, the movement was overwhelmingly protestant

which did not appeal to the immigrants pouring into America from Ireland and Germany during the middle of the 19th century who were catholic. Also the majority of these reformers believed in “Perfectionism: the idea that individuals in society were capable of unlimited improvement” . As a result many of the reform movements were based, ultimately, on a different view of freedom that had ever been used to. For some 19th century reformers, freedom was the opposite of being able to do whatever you wanted, which they associated with the word "license." They believed that true freedom was like an internal phenomenon that came from self-discipline and the practice of self-control. Essentially, instead of being free to consume alcohol, you would be free from the temptation to consume alcohol. According to Philip Schaff, a minister who came to Pennsylvania in the 1840s, "true national freedom in the American view [is] anything but an absence of restraint ... [it] rests upon a moral groundwork, upon the virtue of self-possession and self-control in individual citizens." However, members of the fastest-growing Protestant denominations (like Methodists and Baptists) were taught that it wasn't enough to avoid sin themselves. They felt a sense of personal responsibility to perfect their communities, which led to national movements such as temperance and education reforms.
The growing feeling among reformers that we should limit or even ban alcohol appealed to those Protestant ideas of restraint and perfecting the social order. However, that is also precisely why it was so controversial, especially among Catholic immigrants, who came largely from Germany and Ireland (two nations known for their strong drinking), and whose church did not view alcohol or dancing as inherently sinful the way that Protestant denominations did. There was also a widespread reform movement that led to the construction, by the hundreds, of jails, poorhouses, and asylums for the mentally ill. While they do not seem like places of freedom, to reformers they were. For freedom to them was not having the ability or choice to sin. The mid- 19th century also saw the growth of compulsory state-funded education in the United States. These new schools were called "common schools," and education reformers like Horace Mann hoped that they would give poor students the moral character and body of knowledge to compete with upper-class kids and by 1860, all northern states had established public schools. However, public schools were far less common in the South, where the planter class was afraid of education falling into the hands of poor whites, and especially slaves.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the only challengers to slavery were slaves themselves, free blacks, and Quakers.

But in the early 19th century, colonizationists created a new movement. Their idea was to ship all former slaves back to Africa, and the American Colonization Society became popular and wealthy enough to establish Liberia as an independent homeland for former slaves. While the idea was impractical and racist, it appealed to politicians like Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, and even some freed slaves who figured that America's racism would never allow them to be treated as equals, did choose to emigrate to Liberia. However, most free blacks opposed the idea. In fact, in 1817, 3,000 of them assembled in Philadelphia and declared that black people were entitled to the same freedom as whites. By 1830, advocates for the end of slavery became more and more radical, like William Lloyd Garrison, whose magazine The Liberator was first published in 1831. Known for being "as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice," Radical abolitionism became a movement largely because it used the same mix of pamphleteering and charismatic speechifying that people saw in the preachers of the Second Great Awakening, which, in turn, brought religion and abolition together in the North, preaching a simple message: Slavery was a sin. By 1843, 100,000 northerners were aligned with the American Anti-Slavery Society. What made the abolitionists so radical was their inclusive vision of

freedom. It wasn't just about ending slavery, but about equality. The extension of full citizens' rights to all people, regardless of race.
Unlike many of the other reforms not all Americans were in favor of abolition which is why it it often met with violent resistance.

In 1838, a mob in Philadelphia burned down Pennsylvania Hall because people were using it to hold abolitionist meetings. A year later, a mob in Alton, Illinois murdered anti-slavery editor Elijah P. Lovejoy when he was defending his printing press. The best-known abolitionist was Frederick Douglas, a former slave whose life story is well-known because he wrote the brilliant "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave." In his 1852 Independence Day address Frederick Douglass said, "Would you argue with me that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him." However, he wasn't the only former slave to write about the calamities of slavery. Josiah Henderson's autobiography was probably the basis for the most famous anti-slavery novel in American history: Uncle Tom's Cabin. Uncle Tom's Cabin sold more than a million copies between 1851 and 1854 and the book depicted the evils of slavery so well that it became banned in the South. But while based on a black man's story, Uncle Tom's Cabin was written by a white woman, named Harriet Beecher Stowe which shows us that black abolitionists were battling not only slavery, but near pervasive

stereotypes.
It is no coincidence that so many abolitionists' voices like Harriet Beecher Stowe, for instance, were female. For it was their work toward a more just social order for others transformed the way that American women imagined themselves as well. Women transformed pre-Civil War America as they fought to improve prisons, schools, decreased public drunkenness, and end slavery. And while fighting for change and justice for others, American women discovered that the prisoners, children, and slaves they were fighting for weren't the only people being oppressed and marginalized in the American democracy. Most American women of European descent lived lives much like those of their European counterparts; they were legally and socially subservient to men and trapped within a patriarchal structure. Since women weren't permitted to own property, and property ownership was a precondition for voting, they were totally shut out of the political process. I was decreed that a woman's place was in the home, and their duty was to provide their husband with food, a clean place to live, love, and friendship. The idea of true equality between men and women was so radical that almost no one embraced it. Like, despite the economic growth associated with the market economy, women's opportunities for work were very limited. Most American women had no chance to work for profit outside their houses, which explains why so many women found work outside traditional spheres in reform movements. Reform movements were open to women because if women were supposed to be the moral center of the home, they could also claim to be the moral conscience of the nation. Thus, it didn't seem out of the ordinary for women to become active in the movement to build asylums for the mentally ill, for instance, as Dorothea Dix was, or to take the lead in sobering the men of America. Some of the biggest advocates for temperance were women. The temperance movement made a huge difference in American life, because eventually, male and female supporters of temperance realized that women would be a more powerful ally against alcohol if they could vote. Many women were also important contributors to the anti-slavery movement, although they tended to have more subordinate roles, like abolitionist Maria Stewart, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sarah and Angela Grimké. Many became afraid that equality under the law for male slaves might lead to equality for women. Thus, out of this realization, the movement for women’s rights was born. This explains why women's rights advocates were fighting to overturn not just laws, but also attitudes.
Women emphasized social responsibility taking leading roles in the reform movements of the 19th century, not just when it came to temperance and slavery, but also prisons and asylums, women were able to enter the public sphere for the first time, and these great women changed the world, for better and for worse, just as great men do. And along the way, they made the women question part of the movement for social reform in the United States, and in doing so, American women chipped away at the idea that a woman's place must be in the home. by taking leading roles in the reform movements of the 19th century, not just when it came to temperance and slavery, but also prisons and asylums, women were able to enter the public sphere for the first time, and these great women changed the world, for better and for worse, just as great men do. And along the way, they made the women question part of the movement for social reform in the United States, and in doing so, American women chipped away at the idea that a woman's place must be in the home.