Chapter 15 Reading Guide

The Ferment of Reform and Culture: 1790-1860

I.Religion in America

  1. Reviving Religion
  2. What is Deism? Unitarianism?
  1. What stimulated the 2nd Great Awakening?
  1. How did the 2nd Great Awakening affect religion? American society? Which denominations benefited the most from the 2nd Great Awakening?

B.Denominational Diversity

How did the 2nd G.A. affect the lines between class and regions?

  1. A Desert Zion in Utah
  2. How was the Mormon Church founded?
  1. Why did they leave for Utah? What resulted?

II.Education in America

A. Free Schools for a Free People

1. Why did most Americans eventually support free public education?

  1. What were Horace Mann’s reforms?

B. Higher Goals for Higher Learning

  1. What reforms were made to Higher Education? To Women’s education?
  1. What were the lyceums?

III.Social Reform

  1. An Age of Reform
  2. How did the G.A. affect the Age of Reform?
  1. Why did debtor’s prisons disappear?
  1. How did Dorothea Dix alter the perceptions of the insane? What resulted?

B.Demon Rum- The “Old Deluder”

  1. Why did reformers attack alcohol?
  1. Describe the 2 strategies of the foes of Alcohol? (Temperance and Prohibition)
  1. Assess the success of the Temperance Movement.

C.Women in Revolt

  1. Describe the status of women in early 19th century America.
  1. How did the Market Revolution affect women?
  1. Explain the significance of the Seneca Falls Convention.

D.Wilderness Utopias

Describe the various utopian experiments. Assess their success.

  1. Science and Literature
  1. The Dawn of Scientific Achievement
  2. How successful was medicine in this time period?
  1. What was the average life expectancy?
  1. What improvements in anesthetics occurred in the 1840s?

B.Artistic Achievements

  1. Why was art handicapped in America?
  1. Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, John Trumbell
  1. What was the Hudson RiverSchool?

C.The Blossoming of a National Literature

Main Authors style, titles, and significance.

V.Transcendentalism

  1. Trumpeters of Transcendentalism
  2. What was it? Why significant to American culture?
  1. Who were its major proponents?
  2. Explain the significance of the American Scholar address at Harvard in 1837.
  1. Explain the lasting significance of Thoreau and his On the duty of Civil Disobedience.

VI.Varying Viewpoints

Were the reformers Idealistic or Reactionary? Explain

Terms—Ch 15

Stephen Foster

WashingtonIrving

Oliver Wendell Holmes

James Fenimore Cooper

Noah Webster

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Susan B. Anthony

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Henry David Thoreau

Transcendentalism

Walt Whitman

Brigham Young

Joseph Smith

Horace Greeley

American Temperance Society

Second Great Awakening

Hudson RiverSchool

Knickerbocker Group

Deism

Mormons

Essential Questions

1. Why were women prominent in the reform crusades of the early 19th century? What contribution did they make to social reform?

2. How did the Second Great Awakening and industrialization encourage social reform?

3. In what ways did American literature in the early 19th century reflect the new democracy of the Jacksonian age?

4. how do the Knickerbocker group, Hudson River school, and transcendentalism all reflect the nationalism of early 19th century America?