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The Second Great Awakening Begins
In Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801, a crowd of approximately 50,000 gathered to hear revivalist preachers. Soon, highly emotional camp meeting lead by Methodists, Baptists, and sometimes Presbyterians became common in the region and provided a sense of identity to the middle class adjusting to the changing economy during that time. -
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions founded
Presbyterians founded this soceity that sent missionaries to India. This was a part of the transformation of the revivalist movement into a reform movement. It was the idea of graduates from Williams College. -
Beecher supports revivals
Lyman Beecher becomes famous for supporting revivals in New England just before 1812. Beecher was a Calvinist preacher who became upset when radical revivalists like Finney went against Calvinist doctrine to appeal to emotions. -
American Bible Society founded
Revernd Samuel John Mills organized the American Bible Society. By 1821, they had distributed nearly 140,000 Bibles to parts of the West. -
Women outreach groups
Middle class women formed societies to sprad the gospel to lower class citizens where there were many people "beyond the straints of religion\'. -
Foundation of the American Colonization Society
This society was formed to send blacks to a colony in Africa called Liberia. It was supposed to gradually end slavery by removing slaves, therefore eliminating the South's concern over slave revolt. The society didn't turn out well though, because most of the blacks sent overseas were already free and it denied racial equality, which is what blacks sought at the time. -
American Tract Society founded.
this was the major effort of publicizing and distributing religious tracts to groups like Native Americans. This was another attempt at social reform during the revivalist movement. -
American Temperance Society
This society was founded to make people abstinent from "ardent spirits". Basically, they wanted to get people to stop drinking whiskey and other alcoholic beverages because they felt it was sinful and caused people to sin. Lyman Beecher played a big part in the temperance movement. -
The Cult of Domesticity
During the 1830s and 1840s, the role of women in the household changed. Women were now seen as the guardians of virtue and the spiritual heads of the home. It was their duty to instill in their children the proper religious and moral values. -
Charles Finney preaches
Charles Finney was a prominent Presbyterian preacher of the Second Great Awakneing. It was in the winter of 1830-1831 that he made his most successful conversions in Rochester, NY. He went against Calvinist beliefs and taught that men and women could repent before God and be forgiven of their sins. He appealed to emotions. -
Foundation of American Anti-Slavery Society
This soceity called for the immediate emancipation of slavery. It was founded by white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and his followers. -
Lane Rebels
Theodore Dwight Weld instigated the Lane Rebels incidnt in the Lane Theological Society in Cincinnati. When leaders of the society, such as Lyyman Beecher, didn't accept blacks as equals, Weld and other students left and formed Oberlin College. -
Weld spreads abolitionism
Theodore Dwight Weld spread abolitionism through western New York and Ohio in 1835-1836. He also trained other orators in attempt to convert the entire region to immediate emancipation. As a result of his efforts, Ohio and western NY became big abolitionist regions. -
Horace Mann creates public schools
Horace Mann was a big advocater of public schools. He felt that they should continue the work begun at home or substitute for the parents in the cases of immigrant children. He also felt that the school was a place where a child could be molded to have the proper morals and education and therefore become a good, law abiding citizen. In 1837, he persuaded legislators to accept his proposals on public schools and became the secretary of the new education board. -
Dorothea Dix speaks on behalf of Asylums
It was in the 1830s that use of asylums to confine and "rehabilitate" criminals, lunatics, and the mentally ill became popular. Although in theory, the institution was supposed to replace the family, in reality, the people were confined and had to adhere to a strict daily routine and were treated veru poorly. Dorothea Dix spoke of the cruel treatment of the people in these institutions and became one of the most effective reformers before the Civil War. -
Shaker Community Formed
The Shaker community originated in England. Mother Ann Lee felt that religion could be more personal and beautiful so she founded the Shaker community in the US. The group as a whole thought that Ann Lee was the female reincantion of Christ. They were strict celebists. There was no private property in their community and they were pacifists. Their worship style consisted of violent shakes and dancing, hence their name. -
Creation of Brook Farm
This community was formed in Roxbury, Massachusetts. It was another "perfect" community in which popel worked together. However, education was the main aspect of this community. -
Seneca Falls Convention
This marked the beginning of the women's rights movement. Women who had experienced discrimination in the abolitionist movement now created a Declaration of Sentiments that described the oppression they had faced by men for generations. It also demanded that all women have the right to vote and that all laws giving the husband control of all the women's property be eliminated. This event consisted of women rebelling against the idea of the cult of domesticity. -
Oneida Communtiy
The Oneida community was formed in upstate New York in 1848 by John Humphrey Noyes. They believed that the second coming of Christ had already occurred. They also felt that people could be perfect and completely free of sin, like God. So, they felt that they were above the moral codes set by most religions at that time and proceeded to engage in multiple sexual relations within the community. -
Nathaniel Hawthorne ridicules transcendentalism
Hawthorne wrote both the Scarlet Letter and the House of the Seven Gables to ridicule the idea of a perfect society. He believed that no society or human could ever be perfect because we lived in an imperfect world.
