YR - Religion and Social Reform Document Analysis Lesson

Document Analysis: Religion and Social Reform

Document Analysis iconAs you learned in lesson one, the first half of the 19th Century was a time of religious revival and social reform. Many reformers were driven to try to improve society, many of them inspired by the Second Great Awakening. You many want to go back and review some of the information that relate to these topics. Additionally, view this chart about the reforms during the Antebellum Period. Links to an external site.

Examine these 5 documents and answer the questions that follow. You can also download a pdf copy of the documents here. Links to an external site.

Document 1: Peter Cartright, Second Great Awakening Evangelist From 1801 for years a blessed revival of religion spread through almost the entire inhabited parts of the West....The Presbyterians and Methodists in a great measure united in this work, met together, prayed together, and preached together.... They would erect their camps with logs or frame them, and cover them with clapboards or shingles. They would also erect a shed, sufBiciently large to protect Bive thousand people from wind and rain, and cover it with boards or shingles; build a large stand, seat the shed, and here they would collect together from forty to Bifty miles around, sometimes further than that. Ten, twenty, and sometimes thirty ministers of different denominations would come together and preach night and day, four or Bive days together.... A new exercise broke out among us, called the jerks, which was overwhelming in its effects upon the bodies and minds of the people. No matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a warm song or sermon, and seized with a convulsive jerking all over, which they could not by any possibility avoid, and the more they resisted the more they jerked....I have seen more than Bive hundred persons jerking at one time in my large congregations....The Birst jerk or so, you would see their Bine bonnets, caps, and combs Bly; and so sudden would be the jerking of the head that their long loose hair would crack almost as loud as a wagoner's whip.

Image accompanying Document 1: Methodist revival

Image Accompanying Document 1 showing a Methodist Revival

Document 2: Horace Mann (1846), Education Reformer I believe in the existence of a great, immortal, immutable principle of natural law...which proves the absolute right to an education of every human being that comes into the world; and which, of course, proves the correlative duty of every government to see that the means of that education are provided for all.... Massachusetts is parental in her government. More and more, as year after year rolls by, she seeks to substitute prevention for remedy, and rewards for penalties. She strives to make industry the antidote to poverty, and to counterwork the progress of vice and crime by the diffusion of knowledge and the culture of virtuous principles.

Document 3: From the Declaration of Sentiments (1848) The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.... He has made her, if married, in the eyes of the law civilly dead. He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.... He has monopolized nearly all the proBitable employment, and from those she is permitted to follow, she receives but a scanty remuneration. He closes against her all the avenues to wealth and distinction, which he considers most honorable to himself.... He has denied her the facilities for obtaining a thorough education----all colleges being closed against her.... He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.... He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her conBidence in her own powers, to lessen her self--respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.

Document 4: From the American Anti--Slavery Society That every American citizen, who detains a human being in involuntary bondage as his property is, according to Scripture, a man--stealer: That the slaves ought instantly to be set free, and brought under the protection of the law.... That all those laws which are now in force, admitting the right of slavery, are therefore, before God, utterly null and void; being an audacious usurpation of the Divine prerogative, a daring infringement on the law of nature, a base overthrow of the very foundations of the social compact, a complete extinction of all the relations, endearments and obligations of mankind, and a presumptuous transgression of all the holy commandments; and that therefore they ought instantly to be abrogated.

Document 5: The Drunkard’s Progress by Nathaniel Currier (1846)

Questions

  1. What were some characteristics of the meetings during the Second Great Awakening?
  2. According to Horace Mann, why was education so important?
  3. How have women been treated according to the Declaration of Sentiments?
  4. Why is slavery wrong according to the American Anti-Slavery society?
  5. Why would the temperance reformers argue that laws were needed to restrict and ban the sale of alcohol?

Answer the questions on your own paper or word processing document.

RESOURCES IN THIS MODULE ARE OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) OR CREATED BY GAVS UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. SOME IMAGES USED UNDER SUBSCRIPTION.