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We discussed the period in U.S. history, beginning in 1800 or 1801, known as the Second Great Awakening. Recall that the first Great Awakening took place in the 1730's and 1740's and was an important factor in building colonial unity as well as inspiring common people to take a more active role in both religious and civic affairs. The Second Great Awakening involved many of the same themes about returning American religion to its Puritan roots and involving individuals more actively in their own salvations. The movement was especially influential along the frontier, although revivals quickly followed in New England and throughout the eastern U.S. Revivalism in the north also inspired calls for social reform. As new congregations were established or old ones reinvigorated, various benevolent societies sprang up to address perceived societal ills. Evangelical leaders tried to address issues such as dueling, gambling and prostitution, but it was the fight against drunkenness that achieved the greatest notoriety. Since the American Revolution, whiskey was the most popular beverage in the country; as the textbook states "it was cheaper than milk or beer and safer than water (which was often contaminated)." The temperance movement was very successful in attracting many Americans, mostly women, to the anti-drinking cause. Although the movement became divided between those who advocated total abstinence from alcohol and those that sought to limit only hard liquor consumption, by the 1830's alcohol consumption in the U.S. had been significantly reduced. Another outgrowth of the Second Great Awakening was the abolitionist movement. Many evangelical leaders (primarily in the north) articulated moral and religious objections to slavery, although few if any believed that African-Americans were equal to whites. Most of the early abolitionists advocated the gradual emancipation of slaves, and they proposed sending freed slaves back to Africa to calm white fears. In 1821, the American Colonization Society established the colony of Liberia in West Africa. Several thousand African-Americans were settled there, but most Blacks rejected the idea of returning to Africa. By the early 1830's, the abolitionist movement was also split between those that continued to call for gradual emancipation and removal of Blacks to Africa and those that wanted immediate and unconditional abolition. A leader of the so-called radical abolitionists was William Lloyd Garrison. In 1831 he began to publish a journal called the Liberator; and a few years later he and others formed the American Anti-Slavery Society. Garrison's movement was more attractive to already free Blacks, who became active participants. The most notable of these free Blacks was Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became a well-known abolitionist orator. Women also were active in the anti-slavery movements, and they sought leadership positions and opportunities to speak publicly on behalf of Garrison's organization. While Garrison felt that women should be given an equal role in the movement, other men believed that women should remain silent and passive. This dispute, as well as Garrison's advocacy of more militant strategies, led to another schism in the abolitionist movement. More significantly, the question of what role women should play in the abolitionist movement was an important catalyst for a separate movement for women's equality. Early women leaders like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton called for women's suffrage (the right to vote) as well as the repeal of laws that restricted women's ability to own and control property. In 1848, supporters of equality and women's suffrage met at Seneca Falls, New York. Many historians consider this the birth of the feminist movement. Delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention drafted a famous document known as the Declaration of Sentiments, which set the agenda for the women's movement for the next 100 years. I also talked about some of the institutional reform movements that were spawned from the Second Great Awakening. The development of asylums for the mentally ill, prisons for criminals, and poorhouses for debtors all represented what people considered to be more humane approaches to dealing with society's outcasts. Implicit in the prison reforms of the early 19th century was a new belief that people could be rehabilitated, if given enough time in solitude to reflect upon the immorality of their deeds. Poorhouses, which today may seem cruel and unusual, were meant to instill a sense of the work ethic in debtors, and asylums for the mentally ill were seen as more benevolent alternatives to lives of destitution or confinement at home. Of course, perhaps the most important institutional reform to come out of this period is that of the public school. In 1837, Horace Mann persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to provide for public support of primary schools, through local taxes on property. Mann and other reformers believed that education should be used as a means to teach discipline and respect for order to children, to transform them into law-abiding citizens. Whereas colonial New Englanders saw education as a means of bringing people closer to God (by teaching them how to read the Scriptures), Mann and others now viewed education as a way of instilling middle class values. Mann's common school movement spread throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic states, although it was much slower to take hold in the American south or west.
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