The Second Great Awakening

The Second Great Awakening
and
Social Reform

History 103
Nov. 2, 1998

Social Bases of the Second Party System

Rhetoric of partisanship

Liberty vs. Power

Class struggle vs. class cooperation

Beyond class: other factors in voting behavior

Religion

Ethnicity

Interpretive synthesis?

American Protestantism after the Revolution

Disestablishment

Denominationalism

Origins of the Second Great Awakening

Cane Ridge revival (1801)

Frontier camp meetings

The spread of Methodism

The Second Great Awakening in the Northeast

New England Congregationalism in crisis

The rise of Unitarianism

Lyman Beecher and restrained revivalism

Charles Grandison Finney, "new measures," and Christian Perfectionism

From Revivalism to Reform:
the "Benevolent Empire"

American Education Society (est. 1815)

American Bible Society (est. 1816)

American Sunday School Union (est. 1824)

American Tract Society (est. 1825)

American Home Missionary Society (est. 1826)

The Temperance Movement

Beecher’s sermons

American Temperance Society (est. 1826)

American Temperance Union’s Teetotal Pledge (1836)

Washington Societies (early 1840s)

From conversion to coercion: The Maine Law (1851)

Other Reform Efforts

Abolitionism

Feminism

Pacifism

Public education

Asylums for the mentally ill

Better treatment of deaf and blind

Dietary reform

Penitentiaries for reforming criminals

Orphanages, reform schools for poor and delinquent children

Utopian communities

Continuing controversy

Were the primary aims and achievements of antebellum reform movements

(1) personal improvement and promotion of the public good, especially for the benefit of the disadvantaged and oppressed, or

(2) social control and preservation of social order, mainly for the benefit of the established social and economic elites?

Origins of Oberlin Colony and College

John Jay Shipherd’s mission and vision

Initial settlement (1833)

Launching the Manual Labor Institute (1833)

Opening of collegiate department (1834)

Controversy over abolitionism at Lane Seminary (1834)

Shipherd’s negotiations with Asa Mahan and Lane Rebels

Tappans’ money, free speech, color-blind admissions, "Finney Compact" (1835)

Admission of women to the collegiate department (1837)