*In the early 1800s, Americans experienced a renewed interest in religion that came to be known as the Second Great Awakening.  The largest of many revival meetings was in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, and attracted 25,000 people.  These revivals were led by energetic and dramatic preachers and many of the people there were filled with the Holy Spirit to such an extent that they shouted, danced, and even jerked around.

*One of the most powerful preachers of the Second Great Awakening was a Presbyterian, Charles Finney.  However, the groups that grew the most during the revivals were the Methodists and Baptists.  New groups developed as well (such as the Churches of Christ and the Mormons).

*Other people tried to found utopias where they could work together to create perfect societies, usually based on religious principles (if sometimes rather strange ones).  The Oneida Community in New York believed in ‘complex marriage,’ in which all men in the community were married to all the women at once (although they tried to control who actually had children with whom).  The Nashoba Community, near Memphis, encouraged white and black people to live together to create equality and train freed slaves for a life as independent people, but faced too much prejudice to succeed.

*For many people, the Second Great Awakening encouraged a sense of Christian responsibility towards their fellow man, and helped begin an age of reform.

*One of the first places where reform began was in the prison system.  Before the 1800s, prisons were seen as a place to hold suspects until they were punished, not as a place to hold condemned criminals.

*Reformers hoped, though, that prisons could be used as a place to hold criminals while they were rehabilitated.  Prisons began offering classes and other services to help prepare their inmates to be useful members of society after their release.

*The more brutal forms of traditional punishment were also outlawed (and replaced with prison terms).  For example, while William Carroll was governor of Tennessee, the state abolished imprisonment for debt as well the branding iron, whip, and pillory, and even ended the death penalty for any crime short of first-degree murder.

*William Carroll also oversaw the passage of a law creating an insane asylum for Tennessee, which was also part of prison reform.  The most famous advocate for the mentally ill, however, was Dorothea Dix, a former school teacher who saw how mentally ill people were imprisoned rather than treated.

*Many reformers thought that the primary reasons there were so many prison, however, was the lack of education and the lack of temperance among the general population.

*The temperance movement wanted to outlaw, or at least limit, the manufacture and sale of alcohol.  One of its most famous early leaders was Lyman Beecher from Connecticut.  Two of his children (Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe) would become important leaders in the anti-slavery movement). 

*The temperance movement had some early successes:  the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was founded in 1826, Maine banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in 1851, and other areas passed similar laws.  However, most of these restrictions did not last long, and even many temperance advocates wanted to convince people to stop drinking, not use the law to force them.

*Even worse than alcohol was ignorance.  Education before the 1800s was usually only available to those who chose to hire a private tutor or pay for their children to attend a private school.  The first place in America to offer any free public education was New England.

*One of the main leaders in the creation of public schools was Horace Mann, who became head of the Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837 and in 1839 helped found America’s first state-supported normal school.  Public education in Tennessee did not really gain much support until Andrew Johnson was governor.  He supported legislation that brought free public schools to every county.

*Colleges were fairly rare in the early 1800s, and most only admitted white boys.  Oberlin College in Ohio (founded in 1833) allowed African-Americans (1835) and women (1837) to study there. 

*In 1837, Mount Holyoke College was founded as the first female college in America and in 1854 Ashmun Institute opened in Pennsylvania as the first African-American university (it was later renamed Lincoln University).

*For some Americans, the spiritual revival of the earl 1800s turned their focus not on their fellow man or on traditional religions, but on themselves and on the natural world.  The Transcendentalists believed that people could come closest to God and God’s truth by becoming close to nature and by being true to their own natures and consciousness.

*For many Americans, however, the Great Awakening was part of a movement to reform America in many ways, of which the two most ambitious projects were those that dealt with the greatest number of people:  the women’s rights movement and the anti-slavery movement.

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This page last updated 22 May, 2009.