THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

The rise of industry, the growing commercialization of cities, and westernization all fundamentally altered America in the years 1800 to 1830. Transportation was rapidly changing; a National Road linked the Potomac and the Ohio rivers, and the Eric Canal was completed in 1825. The lives of vast numbers of ordinary people were being altered as a result of these economic and social changes.

In the midst of these transformations, the Second Great Awakening reaffirmed the role of religion in the lives of believers. The movement began in the late 1790s and reached its zenith in the 1830s. Where earlier Calvinist preachers had spoke of predestination, preachers of this era such as Timothy Dwight and Charles Finney proclaimed that one’s actions on Earth played at least some role in an individual’s fate after death. During this period revival meetings, some lasting as long as a week, would cause followers to faint, speak in tongues, or writhe uncontrollably. The Second Great Awakening began as a rural phenomenon, but by the 1820s, it spread to the cities as well. Evangelical sects such as the Methodists and the Baptists also grew in popularity.

Women played a significant role in the revivalism of the era. Many women became dedicated Christians and worked as volunteers for Protestant churches. In addition, many of these churches set up “academics” to educate women.

Other Reform Movements

Many individuals involved in the religious fervor of the era wanted to use that enthusiasm to reform society. Many wanted to act to improve the lives of those living in the cities and others with disadvantages. Dorothea Dix campaigned for better treatment of the mentally ill in the 1830s and 1840s. A prison reform movement also developed. In addition, a large temperance movement developed in this period, urging the working class to not drink to excess. Individuals such as Horace Mann spoke out for formal education for all children, the expansion of the school year, and the need for rigorous standards of teacher training.

Many Christians, especially in the North, began to speak out forcefully about the treatment of American slaves. In the 1820s and 1830s the abolitionist movement gained a large number of supporters. A bolitionists considered slavery to be a sin. The most prominent abolitionist was William Lloyd Garrison, who founded The Liberator, his antislavery newspaper, in 1831. Some were against slavery for other reasons. The American Colonization Society, founded in the South in 1817, opposed slavery on the grounds that it encouraged contact between blacks and whites; members of this organization urged slave owners to free their slaves and return them to Africa.

Frederick Douglass, an ex-slave, was another leader of the abolitionist movement, who in 1845 would write the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a key text for those who opposed slavery. In 1831 Nat Turner, a slave in Virginia, organized a bloody slave revolt that killed 60 whites. As was the case in the Stono Rebellion, the revolt was brutally repressed, and Black Codes and other restrictions on slaves in Southern states became more harsh.