Download The Ferment of Reform and Culture

The Ferment of Reform and
Culture
1790 to 1860
Religious liberalism:
• Secular rationalism
• Deism – (Jefferson, Franklin, Paine) –
relied on reason rather than revelation –
scientific – believes in the existence of a
God or supreme being but denies revealed
religion.
• Unitarian faith – stressed the essential
goodness of human nature - free will and
salvation through good works- appealed to
intellectuals
Second Great Awakening
• Spectacular religious revivals – reversed
the trend towards secular rationalism –
fueled a spirit of social reform
• Attempt to improve Americans’ faith,
morals, and character affected education,
family, literature, and the arts –
culminating in the abolitionist movement to
end slavery
Peter Cartwright
Born: Sept. 1,1785
• Early American
"hellfire and
brimstone"
preacher.
• Helped start the
Second Great
Awakening
Died: Sept. 25,1872
Charles Grandison Finney
1792 – 1875
• Evangelist –
spellbinding oratory
style
• Often called one of
"America's foremost
revivalist“
• Encouraged women
to pray
• Opposed liquor and
slavery
William Miller
Born: February 15, 1782
• American Baptist
preacher, whose
followers were called
Millerites - Adventists
• Millerites rose from
the “Burned Over”
District in the 1830’s.
• They expected Christ
to return to earth on
October 22, 1844.
Died: December 20, 1849
Effect of Religious Diversity
• Second Great Awakening widened lines
between classes and regions
• Prosperous regions in East – little effect
• Methodists and Baptists and new sects –
swelled by fervor
• Baptist and Methodist churches split
over slavery issue
Joseph Smith
Born: 23-Dec-1805
• Founder of the
Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day
Saints (Mormons)
• Cooperative sect
• Voted as a unit
• Polygamy
• Murdered
Died: 27-Jun-1844
Brigham Young
Born: 1-Jun-1801
• Second prophet of the
Latter Day Saints.
• Led followers to Utah
• Utah grew and
became prosperous
• Theocracy –
cooperative
commonwealth
Died: 29-Aug-1877
Free Schools for a Free People
• “ Whenever the people are well-informed,
they can be trusted with their own
government.” – Thomas Jefferson
• Early republic – tax supported schools –
rare – opposition to “free public education”
• Manhood suffrage  triumph of taxsupported school 1825-1850
Horace Mann
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Born: 4-May-1796
Humanitarian
Advocated for public
education
basis of quality education is
good teachers
Wanted longer school terms,
higher pay for teachers,
expanded curriculum
Pushed for reform in mental
institutions and called for the
end of slavery.
Known as "the father of the
American common school“ to serve individuals of all social
classes and religions.
Died: 2-Aug-1859
Noah Webster
Born: 16-Oct-1758
• “Schoolmaster of
the Republic”
• Lexicographer
• Standardized the
American
language
Died: 28-May-1843
William H. McGuffey
Born: Sept. 23,1800(in PA.) Died: 1873
• McGuffey’s Reader
• Text for most schools
from 1836-1900
• Contained religious
messages
• Sought to instill morality,
patriotism, and idealism
• 122,000,000 copies sold
Emma Willard
Born Feb. 23, 1787
• Women's rights
advocate
• 1821 founded the first
women's school of
higher education, the
Troy Female
Seminary.
• Troy became famous,
offering collegiate
education to women
and new opportunity
to women teachers.
Died April 15, 1870
An Age of Reform
• Promises of the Second Great Awakening
led to a wave of reform
• Women were prominent in the reform
movements
• Targets/goals?
– Suffrage
– Prison reform and criminal codes
– Alcohol
– Slavery
Dorothea Dix
Born: 4-Apr-1802
• Activist for the insane
• Through a vigorous
program of lobbying state
legislatures and the
United States Congress,
created the first
generation of American
mental asylums.
Died: 17-Jul-1887
Neal S. Dow
• “Father of Prohibition”
• Employer of labor –
witnessed
debauching effect of
drink
• Sponsored 1st
prohibition law in
Maine in 1851
Lucretia Mott
Born: 3-Jan-1793
• Quaker, abolitionist,
social reformer and
proponent of women's
rights.
• Co-organizer of
Seneca Falls
Convention
• Signatory of the
Declaration of
Sentiments.
Died: 11-Nov-1880
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Born: 12-Nov-1815
• President of the National
Woman Suffrage Association
from 1865-90
• Drafted the Declaration of
Sentiments (Demanded the
vote at Seneca Falls)
• Co–organized Seneca Falls
Stanton (seated) with Susan B. Anthony
Died: 26-Oct-1902
Susan B. Anthony
Born: 15-Feb-1820
• Prominent women's
rights advocate
• In 1869, she and
Elizabeth Cady
Stanton founded
the National
Woman's Suffrage
Association
(NWSA)
• Arrested and fined
for trying to vote in
the 1872
Presidential
election
Age 26
Died: 13-Mar-1906
Elizabeth Blackwell
Born: February 3, 1821
• Abolitionist and women's
rights activist
• 1849 - she became the
first woman to earn a
medical degree in the
United States.
Barred from practice in
most hospitals, she
founded her own infirmary,
the New York Infirmary for
Indigent Women and
Children, in 1857.
Died: May 31, 1910
Margaret Fuller
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Born: 23-May-1810
Friend of Ralph Waldo
Emerson and associated with
transcendentalism
Edited the transcendentalist
journal, The Dial from 1840 to
1842
Joined Horace Greeley's New
York Tribune as literary critic
First female journalist to work
on the staff of a major
newspaper.
Fuller's major work, Woman in
the Nineteenth Century
(1845), argued for the
independence of women.
Died: 19-Jul-1850
Utopian Societies
• Reformers set up over 40 communities
• New Harmony, Indiana
• Brook Farm in Massachusetts –
transcendentalist
• Oneida Community
• Shakers
Robert Owen
Born: 14-May-1771
• Idealistic Scottish manufacturer
• Founder of the Cooperative
Movement
• Began a communal society in
1825 in New Harmony, Indiana.
• It failed.
New Moral World
Owen's envisioned successor of New Harmony. Owenites
fired bricks to build it, but construction never took place.
Died: 17-Nov-1858
John Humphrey Noyes
Born: Sept. 3, 1811
• American utopian
socialist. He founded the
Oneida Community in
1848.
• There were smaller
communities in
Wallingford, Conn.;
Newark, NJ; Putney,Vt;
and Cambridge, Vt.
• The Oneida Community
dissolved in 1880,
Died: April 13, 1886
Scientific Achievement
• Early Americans interested in practical
science
• Louis Agassiz – biologist – insisted on
original research
• Audubon – naturalist
• Sylvester Graham
Louis Agassiz
Born: 28-May-1807
• Swiss-born American
biologist, and
geologist, the
husband of educator
Elizabeth Cabot Cary
Agassiz, and one of
the first world-class
American scientists
• insisted on original
research
Died: 14-Dec-1873
John James Audubon
Born: 26-Apr-1785 (in Haiti)
• American naturalist
• He painted,
catalogued, and
described the birds of
North America.
• Published Birds
of America,
in 1838.
Died: 27-Jan-1851
Sylvester Graham
Born: July 5, 1794
• American Presbyterian
minister
• Early advocate of dietary
reform
• Vegetarianism and
temperance movement
• 1829 - invented Graham
flour and Graham bread,
made from unsifted and
unbolted flour and free from
chemical additives
• Used to make graham
crackers and other products.
Died: September 11, 1851
Artistic Achievement
The Hudson River School of Art
The Hudson River School of Art
The Hudson River School used a
Romantic approach to depict
scenes of America's wilderness,
drawing inspiration from the
Hudson River Valley, the
Catskills, the Berkshires and the
newly opened West.
The Hudson River School of Art
Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty
and Asher B. Durand were
among the early practitioners
of this style and they had a
significant influence on the
artists that followed them.
The Hudson River School of Art
Thomas Cole was a teenager when
his family emigrated from
England. He was a passionate
devotee of the scenery of his
adopted country. Cole is
considered to be the finest
American landscape artist of the
19th Century.
The Hudson River School of Art
1825 to 1875 was a time of powerful
national pride in the United States. The
dramatic and uniquely American
landscapes by Thomas Cole prompted a
positive response from the American
public. Inspiration and spectacular natural
beauty are reflected in the famous
paintings, Niagara by Frederic Edwin
Church, and Yellowstone Falls by Albert
Bierstadt.
NIAGARA FALLS by Frederic Edwin Church
(American 1826-1900)
Albert Bierstadt, Yellowstone Falls,
ca. 1881,
The Hudson River School of Art
Thomas Doughty was one of the first
American painters to restrict himself
to landscape painting as his genre.
Some consider him the catalyst for
the Hudson River School given he
was the one who recognized early on
the magnificent subject matter offered
within the American countryside.
The Hudson River School of Art
Asher B. Durand's early career
was as an engraver. When he
began to paint it was as first a
portraitist before turning his
attention to nature. Cole was a
major inspiration upon him.
The Hudson River School of Art
The Hudson River School
looked into the conflict
between modernity and nature
as well as the effects of
increasing industrialization and
westward expansion.
Title: View on the Schoharie, 1826
Artist: Thomas Cole (American 1801-1848)
Title: Otsego Lake Looking North from Two Mile Point, ca. 1883
Artist: Edward B. Gay (1837-1928)
Title: Cooperstown from Three Mile Point, ca. 1850
Artists: Louis Remy Mignot (1831-1870) & Julius Gollmann (-1898)
Title: Emporium of Indian Curiosities, 1856
Artist: Joachim Ferdinand Richardt (American 1819-1895)
Title: Cider Making in the Country, 1863
Artist: George Henry Durrie (American 1820-1863)
Gilbert Stuart
• One of the greatest
portrait painters of his
time
• Best known for his
portraits of
Washington
Gilbert Stuart
• Portrait of George Washington for the
White House, 1797. This is the painting
that Dolley Madison rescued when the
White House was burned during the
War of 1812
• George Washington
(a.k.a.: the "Athenaeum
Head;" ca. 1798; Stuart
copy of [unfinished] 1796
original),
John Singleton Copley
Born: July 3, 1738
Died: September 9, 1815
• American artist of the
colonial period, famous
for his portraits of
important figures in
colonial New England,
particularly men and
women of the middle
class.
• His portraits were
innovative in that they
tended to portray their
subjects with artifacts that
were indicative of their
lives.
Portrait of Copley by
Gilbert Stuart.
John Singleton Copley
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• Portrait of the Copley family,
1776
Portrait of Samuel Adams
Portrait of Paul Revere
National Literature
• After War of Independence and War of
1812 – new wave of nationalism
• Knickerbocker Group – New York –
a group of writers who were intent on
distancing themselves from European
traditions.
Washington Irving
Born: 3-Apr-1783
• "The Legend of Sleepy
Hollow"
• "Rip van Winkle"
• He and James Fenimore
Cooper were the first
American writers to earn
acclaim in Europe.
• Noted for speaking against
the mistreatment of Native
American tribes by
Europeans and Americans.
Died: 28-Nov-1859
James Fenimore Cooper
Born: 15-Sep-1789
•
Leatherstocking Tales, a
series of novels featuring the
hero Natty Bumppo, known
by European settlers as
"Leatherstocking," and by the
Native Americans as
"Pathfinder," "Deerslayer," or
"Hawkeye".
• Best known of the series is
The Last of the Mohicans
Died: 14-Sep-1851
Transcendentalism
• New ideas in literature, religion, culture, and
philosophy
• Emerged in New England
• Began as a protest against the general state of
culture and society at the time
• Ideal spiritual state that ‘transcends’ the physical
and empirical and is only realized through the
individual’s intuition, rather than the senses
• Look within yourself, rather than outward with
your senses, for meaning
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Born: 25-May-1803
• Author, poet, philosopher
• 1836. Nature.
• 1837. "The American Scholar".
• 1841 The
Transcendentalist
• 1844. Essays: Second Series.
• 1856. Representative Men; on
Plato, Swedenborg,
Montaigne, Shakespeare,
Napoleon, and Goethe.
• '1856. English Traits.
• 1860. The Conduct of Life
• 1862. "Thoreau"; a eulogy for
Henry David Thoreau.
Died: 27-Apr-1882
Henry David Thoreau
Born: 12-Jul-1817
• Author, critic, naturalist,
transcendentalist, pacifist,
abolitionist, tax resister and
philosopher.
• Walden, a reflection upon
simple living amongst nature
• Civil Disobedience, an
argument for individual
resistance to civic
government as moral
opposition to an unjust law.
• Philosophy had tremendous
influence on leaders like
Mahatma Gandhi and
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Died: 6-May-1862
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Born: 4-Jul-1804
• 19th century American
novelist and short story
writer.
• Key figure in the
development of American
literature.
• The Scarlet Letter and
House of the Seven Gables
• Neighbors included Ralph
Waldo Emerson and Henry
David Thoreau.
Died: 19-May-1864
Herman Melville
Born: 1-Aug-1819
• American novelist,
essayist and poet.
• Moby-Dick is Melville's
most famous work and
is often considered one
of the greatest
American novels. It
was dedicated to his
friend Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
Died: 28-Sep-1891
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Born: 27-Feb-1807
Died: 24-Mar-1882
• American poet
• The Song of Hiawatha, Paul
Revere's Ride, A Psalm of Life
and Evangeline.
• Member of a group of poets
known as the Fireside Poets:
Longfellow, William Cullen
Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier,
James Russell Lowell, and Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Sr., who were
the first American poets whose
popularity rivaled that of British
poets
James Russell Lowell
Born: 22-Feb-1819
• Romantic poet, critic,
satirist, writer, diplomat,
and abolitionist.
• Helped found a literary
journal, The Pioneer. It
opened the way to new
ideals in literature and art,
and to as yet unknown
writers such as Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Whittier, Edgar
Allan Poe.
Died: 12-Aug-1891
Walt Whitman
Born: 31-May-1819
• Poet, essayist, journalist, and
humanist, and considered one of
America's best and most
influential poets.
• Leaves of Grass
• The book did not attract the
attention of the reading public
until a letter from Ralph Waldo
Emerson to the poet, in which
the volume was characterized as
the "most extraordinary piece
of wit and wisdom that
America has yet contributed",
was published in the New York
Tribune.
Died: 26-Mar-1892
Louisa May Alcott
Born: 29-Nov-1832(in Germantown, PA) Died: 6-Mar-1888
• American novelist.
• Best known for the novel
Little Women, which she
wrote in 1868.
• Moved to Boston with her
family in 1844, where her
father established an
experimental school and
joined the
Transcendentalist Club
with Emerson and Thoreau
Edgar Allan Poe
Born: 19-Jan-1809
• Poet, short story writer, editor,
and one of the leaders of the
American Romantic Movement.
Best known for his tales of the
macabre.
• Though born in Mass., was
raised in Va. and is considered
a “southern” writer.
• An early American practitioner
of the short story and a
progenitor of detective fiction
and crime fiction.
• His poem "The Raven" became
a popular sensation.
Died: 7-Oct-1849
Stephen Foster
Born: 4-Jul-1826
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Birthplace: Lawrenceville, PA
• Pre-eminent songwriter in the
United States of the 19th
century
• Sometimes known as the
"father of American music.”
• "Oh! Susanna", "Camptown
Races", "My Old Kentucky
Home", "Old Black Joe",
"Beautiful Dreamer" and "Old
Folks at Home" ("Swanee
River")
Died: 13-Jan-1864
P. T. Barnum (Phineas T. Barnum)
Born: 5-Jul-1810
• American
showman
• Best remembered
for founding the
circus that
eventually became
Ringling Brothers
and Barnum and
Bailey Circus.
Died: 7-Apr-1891