REFORMING AMERICAN SOCIETY Chapter 8 Religion Sparks Reform

REFORMING AMERICAN SOCIETY Chapter 8

Religion Sparks Reform Section 1

THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING Charles G. Finney Most famous preacher of time Spread personal salvation To improve self and society Part of Reform Movement in 1830 s Included women’s rights and abolition

REVIVALISM Preachers draw crowds of thousands Religious meeting called revivals To awaken religious faith Revivalism swept though American in 19 th Century Intense in upstate NY (Rochester) Unitarians: path to perfection African American Church: Interpreted messages as promise for freedom

TRANCENDENTALISM Alternative to religion Ideas of New England writer Ralph Waldo Emerson embodied Romanticism (style of art/literature) Transcendentalism: simple life, truth in nature, imagination

IMPROVING EDUCATION No education policy in US Pupils mixed together in classes (age) Few children complete school by age 10 Mainly private schools Only 15% children in school in south Horace Mann of MA, reformed schools Mann doubled money spent on schools

REFORMING ASYLUMS AND JAILS Dorothea Dix: reforms prisons in 1840 s Discovers mentally ill in jails Mentally ill were chained, beaten • She opens up hospitals for mentally ill (1845)