320

15

The Ferment ofReform and Culture

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1790–1860

We [Americans] will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, “THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR,” 1837

Athird revolution accompanied the reformationof American politics and the transformation of

the American economy in the mid-nineteenth cen-tury. This was a diffuse yet deeply felt commitmentto improve the character of ordinary Americans, tomake them more upstanding, God-fearing, and lit-erate. Some high-minded souls were disillusionedby the rough-and-tumble realities of democraticpolitics. Others, notably women, were excludedfrom the political game altogether. As the youngRepublic grew, increasing numbers of Americanspoured their considerable energies into religiousrevivals and reform movements.

Reform campaigns of all types flourished insometimes bewildering abundance. There was not“a reading man” who was without some scheme fora new utopia in his “waistcoat pocket,” claimedRalph Waldo Emerson. Reformers promoted betterpublic schools and rights for women, as well as miracle medicines, polygamy, celibacy, rule by

prophets, and guidance by spirits. Societies wereformed against alcohol, tobacco, profanity, and thetransit of mail on the Sabbath. Eventually overshad-owing all other reforms was the great crusadeagainst slavery (see pp. 362–368).

Many reformers drew their crusading zeal fromreligion. Beginning in the late 1790s and boilingover into the early nineteenth century, the SecondGreat Awakening swept through America’s Protes-tant churches, transforming the place of religion inAmerican life and sending a generation of believersout on their missions to perfect the world.

Reviving Religion

Church attendance was still a regular ritual forabout three-fourths of the 23 million Americans in1850. Alexis de Tocqueville declared that there was

“no country in the world where the Christian reli-gion retains a greater influence over the souls ofmen than in America.’’ Yet the religion of these yearswas not the old-time religion of colonial days. Theaustere Calvinist rigor had long been seeping out ofthe American churches. The rationalist ideas of theFrench Revolutionary era had done much to softenthe older orthodoxy. Thomas Paine’s widely circu-lated book The Age of Reason (1794) had shockinglydeclared that all churches were “set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power andprofit.’’ American anticlericalism was seldom thatvirulent, but many of the Founding Fathers, includ-ing Jefferson and Franklin, embraced the liberaldoctrines of Deism that Paine promoted. Deistsrelied on reason rather than revelation, on sciencerather than the Bible. They rejected the concept oforiginal sin and denied Christ’s divinity. Yet Deistsbelieved in a Supreme Being who had created aknowable universe and endowed human beingswith a capacity for moral behavior.

Deism helped to inspire an important spin-offfrom the severe Puritanism of the past—the Unitar-ian faith, which began to gather momentum in NewEngland at the end of the eighteenth century. Unitar-ians held that God existed in only one person (henceunitarian), and not in the orthodox Trinity (God theFather, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit).Although denying the deity of Jesus, Unitarians

stressed the essential goodness of human naturerather than its vileness; they proclaimed their beliefin free will and the possibility of salvation throughgood works; they pictured God not as a stern Creatorbut as a loving Father. Embraced by many leadingthinkers (including Ralph Waldo Emerson), the Uni-tarian movement appealed mostly to intellectualswhose rationalism and optimism contrasted sharplywith the hellfire doctrines of Calvinism, especiallypredestination and human depravity.

A boiling reaction against the growing liberal-ism in religion set in about 1800. A fresh wave ofroaring revivals, beginning on the southern frontierbut soon rolling even into the cities of the North-east, sent the Second Great Awakening surgingacross the land. Sweeping up even more peoplethan the First Great Awakening (see p. 96) almost acentury earlier, the Second Awakening was one ofthe most momentous episodes in the history ofAmerican religion. This tidal wave of spiritual fervorleft in its wake countless converted souls, manyshattered and reorganized churches, and numerousnew sects. It also encouraged an effervescent evan-gelicalism that bubbled up into innumerable areasof American life—including prison reform, the tem-perance cause, the women’s movement, and thecrusade to abolish slavery.

The Second Great Awakening was spread to themasses on the frontier by huge “camp meetings.’’ As

Religious Revivalism 321

many as twenty-five thousand people would gatherfor an encampment of several days to drink the hell-fire gospel as served up by an itinerant preacher.Thousands of spiritually starved souls “got religion’’at these gatherings and in their ecstasy engaged infrenzies of rolling, dancing, barking, and jerking.Many of the “saved’’ soon backslid into their formersinful ways, but the revivals boosted church mem-bership and stimulated a variety of humanitarianreforms. Responsive easterners were moved to domissionary work in the West with Indians, in Hawaii,and in Asia.

Methodists and Baptists reaped the most abun-dant harvest of souls from the fields fertilized byrevivalism. Both sects stressed personal conversion(contrary to predestination), a relatively democraticcontrol of church affairs, and a rousing emotional-ism. As a frontier jingle ran,

The devil hates the MethodistBecause they sing and shout the best.

Powerful Peter Cartwright (1785–1872) was thebest known of the Methodist “circuit riders,’’ or trav-eling frontier preachers. This ill-educated butsinewy servant of the Lord ranged for a half-centuryfrom Tennessee to Illinois, calling upon sinners torepent. With bellowing voice and flailing arms, heconverted thousands of souls to the Lord. Not onlydid he lash the Devil with his tongue, but with hisfists he knocked out rowdies who tried to break up his meetings. His Christianity was definitely muscular.

Bell-voiced Charles Grandison Finney was thegreatest of the revival preachers. Trained as a lawyer,Finney abandoned the bar to become an evangelistafter a deeply moving conversion experience as ayoung man. Tall and athletically built, Finney heldhuge crowds spellbound with the power of his ora-tory and the pungency of his message. He led mas-sive revivals in Rochester and New York City in 1830and 1831. Finney preached a version of the old-timereligion, but he was also an innovator. He devisedthe “anxious bench,’’ where repentant sinners couldsit in full view of the congregation, and he encour-aged women to pray aloud in public. Holding outthe promise of a perfect Christian kingdom onearth, Finney denounced both alcohol and slavery.He eventually served as president of Oberlin Collegein Ohio, which he helped to make a hotbed ofrevivalist activity and abolitionism.

A key feature of the Second Great Awakening wasthe feminization of religion, both in terms of churchmembership and theology. Middle-class women, thewives and daughters of businessmen, were the firstand most fervent enthusiasts of religious revivalism.They made up the majority of new church members,and they were most likely to stay within the fold when the tents were packed up and the travelingevangelists left town. Perhaps women’s greaterambivalence than men about the changes wroughtby the expanding market economy made them sucheager converts to piety. It helped as well that evan-gelicals preached a gospel of female spiritual worthand offered women an active role in bringing theirhusbands and families back to God. That accom-plished, many women turned to saving the rest ofsociety. They formed a host of benevolent and chari-table organizations and spearheaded crusades formost, if not all, of the era’s ambitious reforms.

Denominational Diversity

Revivals also furthered the fragmentation of reli-gious faiths. Western New York, where many descen-dants of New England Puritans had settled, was so blistered by sermonizers preaching “hellfire anddamnation’’ that it came to be known as the“Burned-Over District.’’

Millerites, or Adventists, who mustered severalhundred thousand adherents, rose from the super-heated soil of the Burned-Over region in the 1830s.Named after the eloquent and commandingWilliam Miller, they interpreted the Bible to meanthat Christ would return to earth on October 22,1844. Donning their go-to-meeting clothes, theygathered in prayerful assemblies to greet theirRedeemer. The failure of Jesus to descend on sched-ule dampened but did not destroy the movement.

Like the First Great Awakening, the SecondGreat Awakening tended to widen the lines betweenclasses and regions. The more prosperous and con-servative denominations in the East were littletouched by revivalism, and Episcopalians, Presbyte-rians, Congregationalists, and Unitarians continuedto rise mostly from the wealthier, better-educatedlevels of society. Methodists, Baptists, and the mem-bers of the other new sects spawned by the swellingevangelistic fervor tended to come from less pros-

322 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

perous, less “learned’’ communities in the ruralSouth and West.

Religious diversity further reflected social cleav-ages when the churches faced up to the slaveryissue. By 1844–1845 both the southern Baptists andthe southern Methodists had split with their north-ern brethren over human bondage. The Methodistscame to grief over the case of a slaveowning bishopin Georgia, whose second wife added several house-hold slaves to his estate. In 1857 the Presbyterians,North and South, parted company. The secession ofthe southern churches foreshadowed the secessionof the southern states. First the churches split, thenthe political parties split, and then the Union split.

A Desert Zion in Utah

The smoldering spiritual embers of the Burned-Over District kindled one especially ardent flame in1830. In that year Joseph Smith—a rugged visionary,proud of his prowess at wrestling—reported that hehad received some golden plates from an angel.When deciphered, they constituted the Book ofMormon, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) was launched. It was a native

American product, a new religion, destined tospread its influence worldwide.

After establishing a religious oligarchy, Smithran into serious opposition from his non-Mormonneighbors, first in Ohio and then in Missouri andIllinois. His cooperative sect rasped rank-and-fileAmericans, who were individualistic and dedicatedto free enterprise. The Mormons aroused furtherantagonism by voting as a unit and by openly butunderstandably drilling their militia for defensivepurposes. Accusations of polygamy likewise aroseand increased in intensity, for Joseph Smith wasreputed to have several wives.

Continuing hostility finally drove the Mormonsto desperate measures. In 1844 Joseph Smith andhis brother were murdered and mangled by a mobin Carthage, Illinois, and the movement seemednear collapse. The falling torch was seized by aremarkable Mormon Moses named Brigham Young.Stern and austere in contrast to Smith’s charm andaffability, the barrel-chested Brigham Young hadreceived only eleven days of formal schooling. Buthe quickly proved to be an aggressive leader, an eloquent preacher, and a gifted administrator.Determined to escape further persecution, Young in 1846–1847 led his oppressed and despoiled

The Birth of the Mormons 323

In his lecture “Hindrances to Revivals,’’delivered in the 1830s, Charles GrandisonFinney (1792–1875) proposed the excom-munication of drinkers and slaveholders:

“Let the churches of all denominations speakout on the subject of temperance, let themclose their doors against all who haveanything to do with the death-dealingabomination, and the cause of temperance istriumphant. A few years would annihilate thetraffic. Just so with slavery. . . . It is a greatnational sin. It is a sin of the church. Thechurches by their silence, and by permittingslaveholders to belong to their communion,have been consenting to it. . . . The churchcannot turn away from this question. It is aquestion for the church and for the nation todecide, and God will push it to a decision.’’

Latter-Day Saints over vast rolling plains to Utah asthey sang “Come, Come, Ye Saints.’’

Overcoming pioneer hardships, the Mormonssoon made the desert bloom like a new Eden bymeans of ingenious and cooperative methods of irri-gation. The crops of 1848, threatened by hordes ofcrickets, were saved when flocks of gulls appeared,as if by a miracle, to gulp down the invaders. (A monument to the sea gulls stands in Salt Lake Citytoday.)

Semiarid Utah grew remarkably. By the end of1848, some five thousand settlers had arrived, andother large bands were to follow them. Many dedi-cated Mormons in the 1850s actually made the thir-teen-hundred-mile trek across the plains pullingtwo-wheeled carts.

Under the rigidly disciplined management ofBrigham Young, the community became a prosper-ous frontier theocracy and a cooperative common-wealth. Young married as many as twenty-sevenwomen—some of them wives in name only—andbegot fifty-six children. The population was furtherswelled by thousands of immigrants from Europe,where the Mormons had established a flourishingmissionary movement.

A crisis developed when the Washington gov-ernment was unable to control the hierarchy ofBrigham Young, who had been made territorial gov-ernor in 1850. A federal army marched in 1857against the Mormons, who harassed its lines of sup-ply and rallied to die in their last dusty ditch. Fortu-nately, the quarrel was finally adjusted withoutserious bloodshed. The Mormons later ran afoul ofthe antipolygamy laws passed by Congress in 1862and 1882, and their unique marital customs delayedstatehood for Utah until 1896.

Free Schools for a Free People

Tax-supported primary schools were scarce in theearly years of the Republic. They had the odor ofpauperism about them, since they existed chiefly to educate the children of the poor—the so-calledragged schools. Advocates of “free’’ public education

324 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

Polygamy was an issue of such consequencethat it was bracketed with slavery in theRepublican national platform of 1856:

“It is both the right and the imperative dutyof Congress to prohibit in the Territoriesthose twin relics of barbarism—Polygamyand Slavery.’’

met stiff opposition. A midwestern legislator criedthat he wanted only this simple epitaph when hedied: “Here lies an enemy of public education.’’

Well-to-do, conservative Americans graduallysaw the light. If they did not pay to educate “otherfolkses brats,’’ the “brats’’ might grow up into a dan-gerous, ignorant rabble—armed with the vote. Taxa-tion for education was an insurance premium thatthe wealthy paid for stability and democracy.

Tax-supported public education, though miser-ably lagging in the slavery-cursed South, triumphedbetween 1825 and 1850. Grimy-handed laborerswielded increased influence and demanded instruc-tion for their children. Most important was the gain-

ing of manhood suffrage for whites in Jackson’s day.A free vote cried aloud for free education. A civilizednation that was both ignorant and free, declaredThomas Jefferson, “never was and never will be.’’

The famed little red schoolhouse—with oneroom, one stove, one teacher, and often eightgrades—became the shrine of American democracy.Regrettably, it was an imperfect shrine. Early freeschools stayed open only a few months of the year.Schoolteachers, most of them men in this era, were too often ill trained, ill tempered, and ill paid.They frequently put more stress on “lickin’” (with a hickory stick) than on “larnin’.’’ These knights ofthe blackboard often “boarded around’’ in the

Problems of Public Education 325

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The Mormon World After Joseph Smith’s murder at Carthage in 1844, the Mormons abandoned theirthriving settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois (which had about twenty thousand inhabitants in 1845), and setout for the valley of the Great Salt Lake, then still part of Mexico. When the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo(see p. 384) in 1848 brought the vast Utah Territory into the United States, the Mormons rapidlyexpanded their desert colony, which they called Deseret, especially along the “Mormon Corridor’’ thatstretched from Salt Lake to southern California.

community, and some knew scarcely more thantheir older pupils. They usually taught only the“three Rs’’—“readin’, ’ritin’, and ’rithmetic.’’ To manyrugged Americans, suspicious of “book larnin’,’’ thiswas enough.

Reform was urgently needed. Into the breachstepped Horace Mann (1796–1859), a brilliant andidealistic graduate of Brown University. As secretaryof the Massachusetts Board of Education, he cam-paigned effectively for more and better school-houses, longer school terms, higher pay forteachers, and an expanded curriculum. His influ-ence radiated out to other states, and impressiveimprovements were chalked up. Yet educationremained an expensive luxury for many communi-ties. As late as 1860, the nation counted only about ahundred public secondary schools—and nearly amillion white adult illiterates. Black slaves in theSouth were legally forbidden to receive instructionin reading or writing, and even free blacks, in theNorth as well as the South, were usually excludedfrom the schools.

Educational advances were aided by improvedtextbooks, notably those of Noah Webster (1758–1843), a Yale-educated Connecticut Yankee who was

known as the “Schoolmaster of the Republic.’’ His“reading lessons,’’ used by millions of children inthe nineteenth century, were partly designed to pro-

326 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) wrote of hiseducation (1859),

“There were some schools so-called [inIndiana], but no qualification was everrequired of a teacher beyond ‘readin’, writin’and cipherin’ to the rule of three. . . . Therewas absolutely nothing to excite ambition foreducation. Of course, when I came of age Idid not know much. Still, somehow, I couldread, write and cipher to the rule of three,but that was all. I have not been to schoolsince. The little advance I now have upon thisstore of education, I have picked up fromtime to time under the pressure of necessity.I was raised to work, which I continued till Iwas twenty-two.’’

mote patriotism. Webster devoted twenty years tohis famous dictionary, published in 1828, whichhelped to standardize the American language.

Equally influential was Ohioan William H.McGuffey (1800–1873), a teacher-preacher of rarepower. His grade-school readers, first published inthe 1830s, sold 122 million copies in the followingdecades. McGuffey’s Readers hammered home last-ing lessons in morality, patriotism, and idealism.

Higher Goals for Higher Learning

Higher education was likewise stirring. The religiouszeal of the Second Great Awakening led to the plant-ing of many small, denominational, liberal arts col-leges, chiefly in the South and West. Too often theywere academically anemic, established more to sat-isfy local pride than genuinely to advance the causeof learning. Like their more venerable, ivy-drapedbrethren, the new colleges offered a narrow, tradition-bound curriculum of Latin, Greek, mathe-matics, and moral philosophy. On new and old cam-puses alike, there was little intellectual vitality andmuch boredom.

The first state-supported universities sprang upin the South, beginning with North Carolina in 1795.Federal land grants nourished the growth of stateinstitutions of higher learning. Conspicuous amongthe early group was the University of Virginia,founded in 1819. It was largely the brainchild ofThomas Jefferson, who designed its beautiful archi-tecture and who at times watched its constructionthrough a telescope from his hilltop home. He dedi-cated the university to freedom from religious orpolitical shackles, and modern languages and thesciences received unusual emphasis.

Women’s higher education was frowned upon in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Awoman’s place was believed to be in the home, andtraining in needlecraft seemed more important thantraining in algebra. In an era when the clinging-vinebride was the ideal, coeducation was regarded as friv-olous. Prejudices also prevailed that too much learn-ing injured the feminine brain, undermined health,and rendered a young lady unfit for marriage. Theteachers of Susan B. Anthony, the future feminist,refused to instruct her in long division.

Women’s schools at the secondary level began toattain some respectability in the 1820s, thanks in

part to the dedicated work of Emma Willard(1787–1870). In 1821 she established the Troy (NewYork) Female Seminary. Oberlin College, in Ohio,jolted traditionalists in 1837 when it opened itsdoors to women as well as men. (Oberlin had alreadycreated shock waves by admitting black students.) Inthe same year, Mary Lyon established an outstand-ing women’s school, Mount Holyoke Seminary (laterCollege), in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Mossbackcritics scoffed that “they’ll be educatin’ cows next.’’

Adults who craved more learning satisfied theirthirst for knowledge at private subscription librariesor, increasingly, at tax-supported libraries. House-to-house peddlers also did a lush business in feed-ing the public appetite for culture. Travelinglecturers helped to carry learning to the massesthrough the lyceum lecture associations, whichnumbered about three thousand by 1835. Thelyceums provided platforms for speakers in suchareas as science, literature, and moral philosophy.Talented talkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson jour-neyed thousands of miles on the lyceum circuits,casting their pearls of civilization before apprecia-tive audiences.

The Growth of Higher Education 327

An editorial in the popular women’smagazine Godey’s Lady’s Book in 1845,probably written by editor Sarah JosephaHare (1788–1879), argued for bettereducation for women as a benefit to all ofsociety:

“The mass of mankind are very ignorant andwicked. Wherefore is this? Because themother, whom God constituted the firstteacher of every human being, has beendegraded by men from her high office; or,what is the same thing, been denied thoseprivileges of education which only can enableher to discharge her duty to her childrenwith discretion and effect. . . . If half theeffort and expense had been directed toenlighten and improve the minds of femaleswhich have been lavished on the other sex,we should now have a very different state ofsociety.’’

Magazines flourished in the pre–Civil War years,but most of them withered after a short life. TheNorth American Review, founded in 1815, was thelong-lived leader of the intellectuals. Godey’s Lady’sBook, founded in 1830, survived until 1898 andattained the enormous circulation (for those days)of 150,000. It was devoured devotedly by millions ofwomen, many of whom read the dog-eared copiesof their relatives and friends.

An Age of Reform

As the young Republic grew, reform campaigns of alltypes flourished in sometimes bewildering abun-dance. Some reformers were simply crackbrained

cranks. But most were intelligent, inspired idealists,usually touched by the fire of evangelical religionthen licking through the pews and pulpits of Ameri-can churches. The optimistic promises of the Sec-ond Great Awakening inspired countless souls to dobattle against earthly evils. These modern idealistsdreamed anew the old Puritan vision of a perfectedsociety: free from cruelty, war, intoxicating drink,discrimination, and—ultimately—slavery. Womenwere particularly prominent in these reform cru-sades, especially in their own struggle for suffrage.For many middle-class women, the reform cam-paigns provided a unique opportunity to escape theconfines of the home and enter the arena of publicaffairs.

In part the practical, activist Christianity ofthese reformers resulted from their desire to reaf-firm traditional values as they plunged ever furtherinto a world disrupted and transformed by the tur-bulent forces of a market economy. Mainly middle-class descendants of pioneer farmers, they wereoften blissfully unaware that they were witnessingthe dawn of the industrial era, which posedunprecedented problems and called for novel ideas.They either ignored the factory workers, for exam-ple, or blamed their problems on bad habits. Withnaive single-mindedness, reformers sometimesapplied conventional virtue to refurbishing an olderorder—while events hurtled them headlong into the new.

Imprisonment for debt continued to be a night-mare, though its extent has been exaggerated. Aslate as 1830, hundreds of penniless people were lan-guishing in filthy holes, sometimes for owing lessthan one dollar. The poorer working classes wereespecially hard hit by this merciless practice. But asthe embattled laborer won the ballot and assertedhimself, state legislatures gradually abolisheddebtors’ prisons.

Criminal codes in the states were likewise beingsoftened, in accord with more enlightened Euro-pean practices. The number of capital offenses wasbeing reduced, and brutal punishments, such aswhipping and branding, were being slowly elimi-nated. A refreshing idea was taking hold that prisonsshould reform as well as punish—hence “reformato-ries,’’ “houses of correction,’’ and “penitentiaries’’(for penance).

Sufferers from so-called insanity were still beingtreated with incredible cruelty. The medieval con-cept had been that the mentally deranged were

328 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

cursed with unclean spirits; the nineteenth-centuryidea was that they were willfully perverse anddepraved—to be treated only as beasts. Manycrazed persons were chained in jails or poor-houseswith sane people.

Into this dismal picture stepped a formidableNew England teacher-author, Dorothea Dix(1802–1887). A physically frail woman afflicted withpersistent lung trouble, she possessed infinite com-passion and willpower. She traveled some sixtythousand miles in eight years and assembled herdamning reports on insanity and asylums from first-hand observations. Though she never raised hervoice, Dix’s message was loud and clear. Her classicpetition of 1843 to the Massachusetts legislature,describing cells so foul that visitors were drivenback by the stench, turned legislative stomachs and hearts. Her persistent prodding resulted inimproved conditions and in a gain for the conceptthat the demented were not willfully perverse butmentally ill.

Agitation for peace also gained momentum inthe pre–Civil War years. In 1828 the American PeaceSociety was formed, with a ringing declaration ofwar on war. A leading spirit was William Ladd, whoorated when his legs were so badly ulcerated that hehad to sit on a stool. His ideas were finally to bearsome fruit in the international organizations for collective security of the twentieth century. TheAmerican peace crusade, linked with a Europeancounterpart, was making promising progress bymidcentury, but it was set back by the bloodshed ofthe Crimean War in Europe and the Civil War inAmerica.

Demon Rum—The “Old Deluder’’

The ever-present drink problem attracted dedicatedreformers. Custom, combined with a hard andmonotonous life, led to the excessive drinking ofhard liquor, even among women, clergymen, andmembers of Congress. Weddings and funerals all toooften became disgraceful brawls, and occasionally adrunken mourner would fall into the open gravewith the corpse. Heavy drinking decreased the efficiency of labor, and poorly safeguarded machin-ery operated under the influence of alcoholincreased the danger of accidents occurring at work.Drunkenness also fouled the sanctity of the family,

Social Reform 329

In presenting her case to the Massachusettslegislature for more humane treatment forthe mentally ill, Dorothea Dix (1802–1887)quoted from the notebook she carried withher as she traveled around the state:

“Lincoln. A woman in a cage. Medford. Oneidiotic subject chained, and one in a closestall for seventeen years. Pepperell. One oftendoubly chained, hand and foot; another vio-lent; several peaceable now. . . . Dedham. Theinsane disadvantageously placed in the jail. Inthe almshouse, two females in stalls . . . ; liein wooden bunks filled with straw; alwaysshut up. One of these subjects is supposedcurable. The overseers of the poor havedeclined giving her a trial at the hospital, as I was informed, on account of expense.”

330 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

threatening the spiritual welfare—and physicalsafety—of women and children.

After earlier and feebler efforts, the AmericanTemperance Society was formed at Boston in 1826.Within a few years, about a thousand local groupssprang into existence. They implored drinkers tosign the temperance pledge and organized chil-dren’s clubs, known as the “Cold Water Army.’’ Temperance crusaders also made effective use ofpictures, pamphlets, and lurid lecturers, some ofwhom were reformed drunkards. A popular temper-ance song ran,

We’ve done with our days of carousing,Our nights, too, of frolicsome glee;For now with our sober minds choosing,We’ve pledged ourselves never to spree.

The most popular anti-alcohol tract of the erawas T. S. Arthur’s melodramatic novel, Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There (1854). Itdescribed in shocking detail how a once-happy vil-lage was ruined by Sam Slade’s tavern. The book wassecond only to Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a best-seller in the 1850s, and it enjoyed a highly successfulrun on the stage. Its touching theme song beganwith the words of a little girl:

Father, dear father, come home with me now,The clock in the belfry strikes one.

Early foes of Demon Drink adopted two majorlines of attack. One was to stiffen the individual’swill to resist the wiles of the little brown jug. Themoderate reformers thus stressed “temperance’’rather than “teetotalism,’’ or the total elimination ofintoxicants. But less patient zealots came to believethat temptation should be removed by legislation.Prominent among this group was Neal S. Dow ofMaine, a blue-nosed reformer who, as a mayor ofPortland and an employer of labor, had often wit-nessed the debauching effect of alcohol—to saynothing of the cost to his pocketbook of work timelost because of drunken employees.

Dow—the “Father of Prohibition’’—sponsoredthe so-called Maine Law of 1851. This drastic newstatute, hailed as “the law of Heaven Americanized,’’prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicatingliquor. Other states in the North followed Maine’sexample, and by 1857 about a dozen had passedvarious prohibitory laws. But these figures aredeceptive, for within a decade some of the statuteswere repealed or declared unconstitutional, if notopenly flouted.

It was clearly impossible to legislate thirst foralcohol out of existence, especially in localitieswhere public sentiment was hostile. Yet on the eveof the Civil War, the prohibitionists had registeredinspiring gains. There was much less drinkingamong women than earlier in the century and prob-ably much less per capita consumption of hardliquor.

Women in Revolt

When the nineteenth century opened, it was still aman’s world, both in America and in Europe. A wifewas supposed to immerse herself in her home andsubordinate herself to her lord and master (her hus-

band). Like black slaves, she could not vote; likeblack slaves, she could be legally beaten by her over-lord “with a reasonable instrument.’’ When she mar-ried, she could not retain title to her property; itpassed to her husband.

Yet American women, though legally regardedas perpetual minors, fared better than their Euro-pean cousins. French visitor Alexis de Tocquevillenoted that in his native France, rape was punishedonly lightly, whereas in America it was one of thefew crimes punishable by death.

Despite these relative advantages, women werestill “the submerged sex’’ in America in the earlypart of the century. But as the decades unfolded,women increasingly surfaced to breathe the air of freedom and self-determination. In contrast towomen in colonial times, many women nowavoided marriage altogether—about 10 percent ofadult women remained “spinsters’’ at the time ofthe Civil War.

Gender differences were strongly emphasizedin nineteenth-century America—largely becausethe burgeoning market economy was increasinglyseparating women and men into sharply distincteconomic roles. Women were thought to be physi-cally and emotionally weak, but also artistic andrefined. Endowed with finely tuned moral sensibili-ties, they were the keepers of society’s conscience,with special responsibility to teach the young howto be good and productive citizens of the Republic.Men were considered strong but crude, always indanger of slipping into some savage or beastly wayof life if not guided by the gentle hands of their lov-ing ladies.

The home was a woman’s special sphere, thecenterpiece of the “cult of domesticity.” Evenreformers like Catharine Beecher, who urged hersisters to seek employment as teachers, endlesslycelebrated the role of the good homemaker. Butsome women increasingly felt that the glorifiedsanctuary of the home was in fact a gilded cage.They yearned to tear down the bars that separatedthe private world of women from the public worldof men.

Clamorous female reformers—most of themwhite and well-to-do—began to gather strength asthe century neared its halfway point. Most werebroad-gauge battlers; while demanding rights forwomen, they joined in the general reform movementof the age, fighting for temperance and the abolitionof slavery. Like men, they had been touched by theevangelical spirit that offered the promise of earthly

reward for human endeavor. Neither foul eggs norfoul words, when hurled by disapproving men, couldhalt women heartened by these doctrines.

The women’s rights movement was mothered bysome arresting characters. Prominent among themwas Lucretia Mott, a sprightly Quaker whose ire hadbeen aroused when she and her fellow female dele-gates to the London antislavery convention of 1840were not recognized. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, amother of seven who had insisted on leaving “obey’’out of her marriage ceremony, shocked fellow femi-nists by going so far as to advocate suffrage forwomen. Quaker-reared Susan B. Anthony, a militantlecturer for women’s rights, fearlessly exposed herselfto rotten garbage and vulgar epithets. She becamesuch a conspicuous advocate of female rights thatprogressive women everywhere were called “Suzy Bs.’’

Other feminists challenged the man’s world. Dr.Elizabeth Blackwell, a pioneer in a previously forbid-den profession for women, was the first female grad-uate of a medical college. Precocious Margaret Fulleredited a transcendentalist journal, The Dial, and

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332 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

took part in the struggle to bring unity and republi-can government to Italy. She died in a shipwreck offNew York’s Fire Island while returning to the UnitedStates in 1850. The talented Grimké sisters, Sarahand Angelina, championed antislavery. Lucy Stoneretained her maiden name after marriage—hencethe latter-day “Lucy Stoners,’’ who follow her exam-ple. Amelia Bloomer revolted against the current

“street sweeping’’ female attire by donning a semi-masculine short skirt with Turkish trousers—“bloomers,’’ they were called—amid much bawdyridicule about “Bloomerism’’ and “loose habits.’’ Ajeering male rhyme of the times jabbed,

Gibbey, gibbey gabThe women had a confabAnd demanded the rightsTo wear the tightsGibbey, gibbey gab.

Fighting feminists met at Seneca Falls, NewYork, in a memorable Woman’s Rights Convention(1848). The defiant Stanton read a “Declaration ofSentiments,’’ which in the spirit of the Declarationof Independence declared that “all men and womenare created equal.’’ One resolution formallydemanded the ballot for females. Amid scorn anddenunciation from press and pulpit, the SenecaFalls meeting launched the modern women’s rightsmovement.

The crusade for women’s rights was eclipsed bythe campaign against slavery in the decade beforethe Civil War. Still, any white male, even an idiot,over the age of twenty-one could vote, while nowoman could. Yet women were gradually beingadmitted to colleges, and some states, beginningwith Mississippi in 1839, were even permittingwives to own property after marriage.

When early feminist Lucy Stone (1818–1893)married fellow abolitionist Henry B. Black-well (1825–1909) in West Brookfield,Massachusetts, in 1855, they added thefollowing vow to their nuptial ceremony:

“While acknowledging our mutual affection bypublicly assuming the relation of husbandand wife, yet in justice to ourselves and agreat principle, we deem it a duty to declarethat this act on our part implies no . . .promise of voluntary obedience to such of thepresent laws of marriage, as refuse to recog-nize the wife as an independent, rationalbeing, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority.”

Wilderness Utopias

Bolstered by the utopian spirit of the age, variousreformers, ranging from the high-minded to the“lunatic fringe,’’ set up more than forty commu-nities of a cooperative, communistic, or “commu-nitarian’’ nature. Seeking human betterment, awealthy and idealistic Scottish textile manufacturer,Robert Owen, founded in 1825 a communal societyof about a thousand people at New Harmony, Indi-ana. Little harmony prevailed in the colony, which,in addition to hard-working visionaries, attracted asprinkling of radicals, work-shy theorists, and out-right scoundrels. The colony sank in a morass ofcontradiction and confusion.

Brook Farm in Massachusetts, comprising twohundred acres of grudging soil, was started in 1841with the brotherly and sisterly cooperation of abouttwenty intellectuals committed to the philosophy oftranscendentalism (see p. 340). They prospered rea-sonably well until 1846, when they lost by fire a largenew communal building shortly before its comple-tion. The whole venture in “plain living and highthinking’’ then collapsed in debt. The Brook Farmexperiment inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classicnovel The Blithedale Romance (1852), whose maincharacter was modeled on the feminist writer Mar-garet Fuller.

A more radical experiment was the OneidaCommunity, founded in New York in 1848. It prac-

ticed free love (“complex marriage’’), birth control(through “male continence,” or coitus reservatus),and the eugenic selection of parents to producesuperior offspring. This curious enterprise flour-ished for more than thirty years, largely because itsartisans made superior steel traps and Oneida Com-munity (silver) Plate (see “Makers of America: TheOneida Community,” pp. 336–337).

Various communistic experiments, mostlysmall in scale, have been attempted sinceJamestown. But in competition with democraticfree enterprise and free land, virtually all of themsooner or later failed or changed their methods.Among the longest-lived sects were the Shakers. Ledby Mother Ann Lee, they began in the 1770s to setup the first of a score or so of religious communities.The Shakers attained a membership of about sixthousand in 1840, but since their monastic customsprohibited both marriage and sexual relations, theywere virtually extinct by 1940.

The Dawn of Scientific Achievement

Early Americans, confronted with pioneering prob-lems, were more interested in practical gadgets thanin pure science. Jefferson, for example, was a giftedamateur inventor who won a gold medal for a newtype of plow. Noteworthy also were the writings ofthe mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch (1733–1838)

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334 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

on practical navigation and of the oceanographerMatthew F. Maury (1806–1873) on ocean winds andcurrents. These writers promoted safety, speed, andeconomy. But as far as basic science was concerned,Americans were best known for borrowing andadapting the findings of Europeans.

Yet the Republic was not without scientific tal-ent. The most influential American scientist of thefirst half of the nineteenth century was ProfessorBenjamin Silliman (1779–1864), a pioneer chemistand geologist who taught and wrote brilliantly atYale College for more than fifty years. ProfessorLouis Agassiz (1807–1873), a distinguished French-Swiss immigrant, served for a quarter of a century atHarvard College. A path-breaking student of biologywho sometimes carried snakes in his pockets, he

insisted on original research and deplored thereigning overemphasis on memory work. ProfessorAsa Gray (1810–1888) of Harvard College, theColumbus of American botany, published over 350books, monographs, and papers. His textbooks setnew standards for clarity and interest.

Lovers of American bird lore owed much to the French-descended naturalist John J. Audubon(1785–1851), who painted wild fowl in their naturalhabitat. His magnificently illustrated Birds of Amer-ica attained considerable popularity. The AudubonSociety for the protection of birds was named afterhim, although as a young man he shot much feath-ered game for sport.

Medicine in America, despite a steady growth ofmedical schools, was still primitive by modern stan-

dards. Bleeding remained a common cure, and acurse as well. Smallpox plagues were still dreaded,and the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadel-phia took several thousand lives. “Bring out yourdead!’’ was the daily cry of the corpse-wagon drivers.

People everywhere complained of ill health—malaria, the “rheumatics,’’ the “miseries,’’ and thechills. Illness often resulted from improper diet,hurried eating, perspiring and cooling off toorapidly, and ignorance of germs and sanitation. “Wewas sick every fall, regular,’’ wrote the mother offuture president James Garfield. Life expectancywas still dismayingly short—about forty years for awhite person born in 1850, and less for blacks. Thesuffering from decayed or ulcerated teeth was enor-mous; tooth extraction was often practiced by themuscular village blacksmith.

Self-prescribed patent medicines were common(one dose for people, two for horses) and includedRobertson’s Infallible Worm Destroying Lozenges.Fad diets proved popular, including the whole-wheat bread and crackers regimen of Sylvester Gra-ham. Among home remedies was the rubbing oftumors with dead toads. The use of medicine by theregular doctors was often harmful, and Dr. OliverWendell Holmes declared in 1860 that if the medi-cines, as then employed, were thrown into the sea,humans would be better off and the fish worse off.

Victims of surgical operations were ordinarilytied down, often after a stiff drink of whiskey. Thesurgeon then sawed or cut with breakneck speed,undeterred by the piercing shrieks of the patient. A priceless boon for medical progress came in the early 1840s, when several American doctors

and dentists, working independently, successfullyemployed laughing gas and ether as anesthetics.

Artistic Achievements

Architecturally, America contributed little of note in the first half of the century. The rustic Republic,still under pressure to erect shelters in haste, wascontinuing to imitate European models. Publicbuildings and other important structures followedGreek and Roman lines, which seemed curiouslyout of place in a wilderness setting. A remarkableGreek revival came between 1820 and 1850, partly

Science and Health 335

An outbreak of cholera occurred in New YorkCity in 1832, and a wealthy businessman,Philip Hone (1780–1851), wrote in his diaryfor the Fourth of July,

“The alarm about the cholera has preventedall the usual jollification under the publicauthority. . . . The Board of Health reportsto-day twenty new cases and eleven deathssince noon yesterday. The disease is here inall its violence and will increase. God grantthat its ravages may be confined, and its visitshort.’’

The Oneida Community

John Humphrey Noyes (1811–1886), the founderof the Oneida Community, repudiated the old

Puritan doctrines that God was vengeful and thatsinful mankind was doomed to dwell in a vale oftears. Noyes believed in a benign deity, in the sweet-ness of human nature, and in the possibility of aperfect Christian community on earth. “The morewe get acquainted with God,” he declared, “themore we shall find it our special duty to be happy.”

That sunny thought was shared by many early-nineteenth-century American utopians (a wordderived from Greek that slyly combines the mean-ings of “a good place” and “no such place”). ButNoyes added some wrinkles of his own. The key tohappiness, he taught, was the suppression of self-ishness. True Christians should possess no privateproperty—nor should they indulge in exclusiveemotional relationships, which bred jealousy, quar-reling, and covetousness. Material things and sexualpartners alike, Noyes preached, should be shared.Marriage should not be monogamous. Instead allmembers of the community should be free to loveone another in “complex marriage.” Noyes called hissystem “Bible Communism.”

Tall and slender, with piercing blue eyes andreddish hair, the charismatic Noyes began voicingthese ideas in his hometown of Putney, Vermont, inthe 1830s. He soon attracted a group of followerswho called themselves the Putney Association, akind of extended family whose members farmedfive hundred acres by day and sang and prayedtogether in the evenings. They sustained their spiri-tual intensity by submitting to “Mutual Criticism,”in which the person being criticized would sit insilence while other members frankly discussed hisor her faults and merits. “I was, metaphorically,stood upon my head and allowed to drain till all the self-righteousness had dripped out of me,” one manwrote of his experience with Mutual Criticism.

The Putney Association also indulged in sexualpractices that outraged the surrounding commu-

nity’s sense of moral propriety. Indicted for adulteryin 1847, Noyes led his followers to Oneida, in the sup-posedly more tolerant region of New York’s Burned-Over District, the following year. Several affiliatedcommunities were also established, the most impor-tant of which was at Wallingford, Connecticut.

The Oneidans struggled in New York until theywere joined in the 1850s by Sewell Newhouse, aclever inventor of steel animal traps. The manufac-ture of Newhouse’s traps, and other products suchas sewing silk and various types of bags, put theOneida Community on a sound financial footing. Bythe 1860s Oneida was a flourishing commonwealthof some three hundred people. Men and womenshared equally in all the community’s tasks, fromfield to factory to kitchen. The members lived underone roof in Mansion House, a sprawling buildingthat boasted central heating, a well-stocked library,and a common dining hall, as well as the “Big Hall”where members gathered nightly for prayer andentertainment. Children at the age of three wereremoved from direct parental care and raised com-munally in the Children’s House until the age of thir-teen or fourteen, when they took up jobs in thecommunity’s industries. They imbibed their reli-gious doctrines with their school lessons:

I-spiritWith me never shall stay,

We-spiritMakes us happy and gay.

Oneida’s apparent success fed the utopiandreams of others, and for a time it became a greattourist attraction. Visitors from as far away asEurope came to picnic on the shady lawns, specu-lating on the sexual secrets that Mansion Houseguarded, while their hosts fed them strawberriesand cream and entertained them with music.

But eventually the same problems that haddriven Noyes and his band from Vermont began toshadow their lives at Oneida. Their New York neigh-bors grew increasingly horrified at the Oneidans’

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licentious sexual practices, including the selectivebreeding program by which the communitymatched mates and gave permission—or orders—to procreate, without regard to the niceties of matri-mony. “It was somewhat startling to me,” onestraight-laced visitor commented, “to hear Miss������������������� speak about her baby.”

Yielding to their neighbors’ criticisms, the Onei-dans gave up complex marriage in 1879. Soon other“communistic” practices withered away as well. Thecommunal dining hall became a restaurant, wheremeals were bought with money, something manyOneidans had never used before. In 1880 the Onei-

dans abandoned communism altogether andbecame a joint-stock company specializing in themanufacture of silver tableware. Led by Noyes’s sonPierrepont, Oneida Community, Ltd., grew into theworld’s leading manufacturer of stainless steelknives, forks, and spoons, with annual sales by the1990s of some half a billion dollars.

As for Mansion House, it still stands in centralNew York, but it now serves as a museum and pri-vate residence. The “Big Hall” is the site of Oneida, Ltd.’s annual shareholders’ meetings. Ironically,what grew from Noyes’s religious vision was notutopia but a mighty capitalist corporation.

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stimulated by the heroic efforts of the Greeks in the1820s to wrest independence from the “terribleTurk.’’ About midcentury strong interest developedin a revival of Gothic forms, with their emphasis onpointed arches and large windows.

Talented Thomas Jefferson, architect of revolu-tion, was probably the ablest American architect ofhis generation. He brought a classical design to hisVirginia hilltop home, Monticello—perhaps themost stately mansion in the nation. The quadrangleof the University of Virginia at Charlottesville,another of Jefferson’s creations, remains one of thefinest examples of classical architecture in America.

The art of painting continued to be handi-capped. It suffered from the dollar-grabbing of a rawcivilization; from the hustle, bustle, and absence ofleisure; from the lack of a wealthy class to sit for por-traits—and then pay for them. Some of the earliestpainters were forced to go to England, where theyfound both training and patrons. America exportedartists and imported art.

Painting, like the theater, also suffered from thePuritan prejudice that art was a sinful waste oftime—and often obscene. John Adams boasted that“he would not give a sixpence for a bust of Phidias ora painting by Raphael.’’ When Edward Everett, theeminent Boston scholar and orator, placed a statueof Apollo in his home, he had its naked limbs draped.

Competent painters nevertheless emerged.Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828), a spendthrift RhodeIslander and one of the most gifted of the early group,wielded his brush in Britain in competition with thebest artists. He produced several portraits of Wash-ington, all of them somewhat idealized and dehu-manized. Truth to tell, by the time he posed for Stuart,the famous general had lost his natural teeth andsome of the original shape of his face. Charles WillsonPeale (1741–1827), a Marylander, painted some sixtyportraits of Washington, who patiently sat for aboutfourteen of them. John Trumbull (1756–1843), whohad fought in the Revolutionary War, recaptured itsscenes and spirit on scores of striking canvases.

338 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

During the nationalistic upsurge after the War of1812, American painters of portraits turned increas-ingly from human landscapes to romantic mirror-ings of local landscapes. The Hudson River schoolexcelled in this type of art. At the same time, portraitpainters gradually encountered some unwelcomecompetition from the invention of a crude photo-graph known as the daguerreotype, perfected about1839 by a Frenchman, Louis Daguerre.

Music was slowly shaking off the restraints ofcolonial days, when the prim Puritans had frownedupon nonreligious singing. Rhythmic and nostalgic“darky’’ tunes, popularized by whites, were becom-ing immense hits by midcentury. Special favoriteswere the uniquely American minstrel shows, featur-ing white actors with blackened faces. “Dixie,’’ lateradopted by the Confederates as their battle hymn,was written in 1859, ironically in New York City by anOhioan. The most famous black songs, also ironi-cally, came from a white Pennsylvanian, Stephen C.Foster (1826–1864). His one excursion into the Southoccurred in 1852, after he had published “Old Folksat Home.’’ Foster made a valuable contribution toAmerican folk music by capturing the plaintive spiritof the slaves. An odd and pathetic figure, he finallylost both his art and his popularity and died in acharity ward after drowning his sorrows in drink.

The Blossoming of a National Literature

“Who reads an American book?’’ sneered a Britishcritic of 1820. The painful truth was that the nation’srough-hewn, pioneering civilization gave littleencouragement to “polite’’ literature. Much of thereading matter was imported or plagiarized fromBritain.

Busy conquering a continent, the Americanspoured most of their creative efforts into practicaloutlets. Praiseworthy were political essays, like TheFederalist of Hamilton, Jay, and Madison; pamphlets,like Tom Paine’s Common Sense; and political ora-tions, like the masterpieces of Daniel Webster. In thecategory of nonreligious books published before1820, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1818) isone of the few that achieved genuine distinction. Hisnarrative is a classic in its simplicity, clarity, andinspirational quality. Even so, it records only a frag-ment of “Old Ben’s’’ long, fruitful, and amorous life.

A genuinely American literature received astrong boost from the wave of nationalism that fol-lowed the War of Independence and especially theWar of 1812. By 1820 the older seaboard areas weresufficiently removed from the survival mentality oftree-chopping and butter-churning so that litera-ture could be supported as a profession. TheKnickerbocker Group in New York blazed brilliantlyacross the literary heavens, thus enabling Americafor the first time to boast of a literature to match itsmagnificent landscapes.

Washington Irving (1783–1859), born in NewYork City, was the first American to win internationalrecognition as a literary figure. Steeped in the tradi-tions of New Netherland, he published in 1809 hisKnickerbocker’s History of New York, with its amusingcaricatures of the Dutch. When the family businessfailed, Irving was forced to turn to the goose-featherpen. In 1819–1820 he published The Sketch Book,which brought him immediate fame at home andabroad. Combining a pleasing style with delicatecharm and quiet humor, he used English as well asAmerican themes and included such immortalDutch-American tales as “Rip Van Winkle’’ and “TheLegend of Sleepy Hollow.’’ Europe was amazed to findat last an American with a feather in his hand, not inhis hair. Later turning to Spanish locales and biogra-phy, Irving did much to interpret America to Europeand Europe to America. He was, said the EnglishmanWilliam Thackeray, “the first ambassador whom theNew World of letters sent to the Old.’’

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) was thefirst American novelist, as Washington Irving wasthe first general writer, to gain world fame and tomake New World themes respectable. Marrying intoa wealthy family, he settled down on the frontier ofNew York. Reading one day to his wife from aninsipid English novel, Cooper remarked in disgustthat he could write a better book himself. His wifechallenged him to do so—and he did.

After an initial failure, Cooper launched outupon an illustrious career in 1821 with his secondnovel, The Spy—an absorbing tale of the AmericanRevolution. His stories of the sea were meritoriousand popular, but his fame rests most enduringly on the Leatherstocking Tales. A deadeye riflemannamed Natty Bumppo, one of nature’s noblemen,meets with Indians in stirring adventures like TheLast of the Mohicans. James Fenimore Cooper’s novels had a wide sale among Europeans, some ofwhom came to think of all American people as

Landmarks in Arts and Literature 339

born with tomahawk in hand. Actually Cooper wasexploring the viability and destiny of America’srepublican experiment, by contrasting the unde-filed values of “natural men,’’ children of thewooded wilderness, with the artificiality of moderncivilization.

A third member of the Knickerbocker group inNew York was the belated Puritan William CullenBryant (1794–1878), transplanted from Massachu-setts. At age sixteen he wrote the meditative andmelancholy “Thanatopsis’’ (published in 1817),which was one of the first high-quality poems pro-duced in the United States. Critics could hardlybelieve that it had been written on “this side of thewater.’’ Although Bryant continued with poetry, hewas forced to make his living by editing the influen-tial New York Evening Post. For over fifty years, he seta model for journalism that was dignified, liberal,and conscientious.

Trumpeters of Transcendentalism

A golden age in American literature dawned in thesecond quarter of the nineteenth century, when anamazing outburst shook New England. One of themainsprings of this literary flowering was tran-scendentalism, especially around Boston, whichpreened itself as “the Athens of America.’’

The transcendentalist movement of the 1830sresulted in part from a liberalizing of the straight-jacket Puritan theology. It also owed much to for-eign influences, including the German romanticphilosophers and the religions of Asia. The tran-scendentalists rejected the prevailing theory,derived from John Locke, that all knowledge comesto the mind through the senses. Truth, rather, “tran-scends’’ the senses: it cannot be found by observa-tion alone. Every person possesses an inner light

340 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

that can illuminate the highest truth and put him orher in direct touch with God, or the “Oversoul.’’

These mystical doctrines of transcendentalismdefied precise definition, but they underlay con-crete beliefs. Foremost was a stiff-backed individu-alism in matters religious as well as social. Closelyassociated was a commitment to self-reliance, self-culture, and self-discipline. These traits naturallybred hostility to authority and to formal institutionsof any kind, as well as to all conventional wisdom.Finally came exaltation of the dignity of the individ-ual, whether black or white—the mainspring of awhole array of humanitarian reforms.

Best known of the transcendentalists wasBoston-born Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882).Tall, slender, and intensely blue-eyed, he mirroredserenity in his noble features. Trained as a Unitarianminister, he early forsook his pulpit and ultimatelyreached a wider audience by pen and platform. Hewas a never-failing favorite as a lyceum lecturer andfor twenty years took a western tour every winter.Perhaps his most thrilling public effort was a PhiBeta Kappa address, “The American Scholar,’’ deliv-ered at Harvard College in 1837. This brilliantappeal was an intellectual Declaration of Independ-ence, for it urged American writers to throw offEuropean traditions and delve into the riches oftheir own backyards.

Hailed as both a poet and a philosopher, Emerson was not of the highest rank as either. He was more influential as a practical philosopherand through his fresh and vibrant essays en-riched countless thousands of humdrum lives.Catching the individualistic mood of the Republic, he stressed self-reliance, self-improvement, self-confidence, optimism, and freedom. The secret ofEmerson’s popularity lay largely in the fact that hisideals reflected those of an expanding America. Bythe 1850s he was an outspoken critic of slavery, andhe ardently supported the Union cause in the CivilWar.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was Emer-son’s close associate—a poet, a mystic, a transcen-dentalist, and a nonconformist. Condemning agovernment that supported slavery, he refused topay his Massachusetts poll tax and was jailed for anight.* A gifted prose writer, he is well known forWalden: Or Life in the Woods (1854). The book is arecord of Thoreau’s two years of simple existence ina hut that he built on the edge of Walden Pond, nearConcord, Massachusetts. A stiff-necked individual-ist, he believed that he should reduce his bodilywants so as to gain time for a pursuit of truththrough study and meditation. Thoreau’s Waldenand his essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience exer-cised a strong influence in furthering idealisticthought, both in America and abroad. His writingslater encouraged Mahatma Gandhi to resist Britishrule in India and, still later, inspired the develop-ment of American civil rights leader Martin LutherKing, Jr.’s thinking about nonviolence.

Bold, brassy, and swaggering was the open-collared figure of Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman(1819–1892). In his famous collection of poemsLeaves of Grass (1855), he gave free rein to his gush-ing genius with what he called a “barbaric yawp.’’Highly romantic, emotional, and unconventional,he dispensed with titles, stanzas, rhymes, and attimes even regular meter. He handled sex withshocking frankness, although he laundered hisverses in later editions, and his book was banned inBoston.

Leading Transcendentalists 341

In 1849 Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)published On the Duty of CivilDisobedience, asserting,

“I heartily accept the motto, ‘Thatgovernment is best which governs least’; andI should like to see it acted up to morerapidly and systematically. Carried out, itfinally amounts to this, which also I believe—‘That government is best which governs notat all’; and when men are prepared for it,that will be the kind of government whichthey will have. Government is at best anexpedient; but most governments areusually, and all governments are sometimes,inexpedient.’’

*The story (probably apocryphal) is that Emerson visitedThoreau at the jail and asked, “Why are you here?’’ The replycame, “Why are you not here?’’

Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was at first a financialfailure. The only three enthusiastic reviews that itreceived were written by the author himself—anonymously. But in time the once-withered Leavesof Grass, revived and honored, won for Whitman anenormous following in both America and Europe.His fame increased immensely among “Whitmani-acs’’ after his death.

Leaves of Grass gained for Whitman the infor-mal title “Poet Laureate of Democracy.’’ Singing with transcendental abandon of his love for themasses, he caught the exuberant enthusiasm of an expanding America that had turned its back onthe Old World:

All the Past we leave behind;We debouch upon a newer, mightier world,

varied world;Fresh and strong the world we seize—world

of labor and the march—Pioneers! O Pioneers!

Here at last was the native art for which critics hadbeen crying.

Glowing Literary Lights

Certain other literary giants were not actively asso-ciated with the transcendentalist movement,though not completely immune to its influences.Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), who for many years taught modern lan-guages at Harvard College, was one of the most pop-ular poets ever produced in America. Handsomeand urbane, he lived a generally serene life, exceptfor the tragic deaths of two wives, the second ofwhom perished before his eyes when her dresscaught fire. Writing for the genteel classes, he wasadopted by the less cultured masses. His wideknowledge of European literature supplied him with

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In 1876 the London Saturday Review referredto Walt Whitman (1819–1892) as the authorof a volume of

“so-called poems which were chieflyremarkable for their absurd extravagancesand shameless obscenity, and who has since,we are glad to say, been little heard ofamong decent people.’’

In 1888 Whitman wrote,

“I had my choice when I commenced. I bidneither for soft eulogies, big money returns,nor the approbation of existing schools andconventions. . . . I have had my say entirelymy own way, and put it unerringly on record—the value thereof to be decided by time.’’

many themes, but some of his most admiredpoems—“Evangeline,’’ “The Song of Hiawatha,’’ and“The Courtship of Miles Standish’’—were based onAmerican traditions. Immensely popular in Europe,Longfellow was the only American ever to be hon-ored with a bust in the Poets’ Corner of WestminsterAbbey.

A fighting Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier(1807–1892), with piercing dark eyes and swarthycomplexion, was the uncrowned poet laureate ofthe antislavery crusade. Less talented as a writerthan Longfellow, he was vastly more important ininfluencing social action. His poems cried aloudagainst inhumanity, injustice, and intolerance,against

The outworn rite, the old abuse,The pious fraud transparent grown.

Undeterred by insults and the stoning of mobs,Whittier helped arouse a calloused America on theslavery issue. A supreme conscience rather than asterling poet or intellect, Whittier was one of themoving forces of his generation, whether moral,humanitarian, or spiritual. Gentle and lovable, hewas preeminently the poet of human freedom.

Many-sided Professor James Russell Lowell(1819–1891), who succeeded Professor Longfellowat Harvard, ranks as one of America’s better poets.He was also a distinguished essayist, literary critic,editor, and diplomat—a diffusion of talents thathampered his poetical output. Lowell is remem-bered as a political satirist in his Biglow Papers,especially those of 1846 dealing with the MexicanWar. Written partly as poetry in the Yankee dialect,the Papers condemned in blistering terms thealleged slavery-expansion designs of the Polkadministration.

The scholarly Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809–1894), who taught anatomy with a sparkle atHarvard Medical School, was a prominent poet,essayist, novelist, lecturer, and wit. A nonconformistand a fascinating conversationalist, he shoneamong a group of literary lights who regardedBoston as “the hub of the universe.’’ His poem “TheLast Leaf,’’ in honor of the last “white Indian’’ of theBoston Tea Party, came to apply to himself. Dying atthe age of eighty-five, he was the “last leaf’’ amonghis distinguished contemporaries.*

Two women writers whose work remains enor-mously popular today were also tied to this NewEngland literary world. Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, inthe bosom of transcendentalism, alongside neigh-bors Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller. Her philosopherfather Bronson Alcott occupied himself more devot-edly to ideas than earning a living, leaving hisdaughter to write Little Women (1868) and otherbooks to support her mother and sisters. Not faraway in Amherst, Massachusetts, poet Emily Dick-inson (1830–1886) lived as a recluse but created herown original world through precious gems ofpoetry. In deceptively spare language and simplerhyme schemes, she explored universal themes of

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*Oliver Wendell Holmes had a son with the same name whobecame a distinguished justice of the Supreme Court(1902–1932) and who lived to be ninety-four, less two days.

nature, love, death, and immortality. Although sherefused during her lifetime to publish any of herpoems, when she died, nearly two thousand of themwere found among her papers and eventually madetheir way into print.

The most noteworthy literary figure producedby the South before the Civil War, unless Edgar AllanPoe is regarded as a southerner, was novelistWilliam Gilmore Simms (1806–1870). Quantita-tively, at least, he was great: eighty-two booksflowed from his ever-moist pen, winning for him the title “the Cooper of the South.’’ His themes dealt with the southern frontier in colonialdays and with the South during the RevolutionaryWar. But he was neglected by his own section, eventhough he married into the socially elite andbecame a slaveowner. The high-toned planter aristocracy would never accept the son of a poorCharleston storekeeper.

Literary Individualists and Dissenters

Not all writers in these years believed so keenly inhuman goodness and social progress. Edgar AllanPoe (1809–1849), who spent much of his youth inVirginia, was an eccentric genius. Orphaned at anearly age, cursed with ill health, and married to achild-wife of thirteen who fell fatally ill of tuberculo-sis, he suffered hunger, cold, poverty, and debt. Fail-ing at suicide, he took refuge in the bottle anddissipated his talent early. Poe was a gifted lyricpoet, as “The Raven’’ attests. A master stylist, he alsoexcelled in the short story, especially of the horrortype, in which he shared his alcoholic nightmareswith fascinated readers. If he did not invent themodern detective novel, he at least set new highstandards in tales like “The Gold Bug.’’

Poe was fascinated by the ghostly and ghastly,as in “The Fall of the House of Usher’’ and other sto-ries. He reflected a morbid sensibility distinctly atodds with the usually optimistic tone of Americanculture. Partly for this reason, Poe has perhaps beeneven more prized by Europeans than by Americans.His brilliant career was cut short when he was found

drunk in a Baltimore gutter and shortly thereafterdied.

Two other writers reflected the continuingCalvinist obsession with original sin and with thenever-ending struggle between good and evil. Insomber Salem, Massachusetts, writer NathanielHawthorne (1804–1864) grew up in an atmosphereheavy with the memories of his Puritan forebearsand the tragedy of his father’s premature death onan ocean voyage. His masterpiece was The ScarletLetter (1850), which describes the Puritan practiceof forcing an adultress to wear a scarlet “A” on herclothing. The tragic tale chronicles the psychologi-cal effects of sin on the guilty heroine and her secretlover (the father of her baby), a minister of thegospel in Puritan Boston. In The Marble Faun(1860), Hawthorne dealt with a group of youngAmerican artists who witness a mysterious murderin Rome. The book explores the concepts of theomnipresence of evil and the dead hand of the pastweighing upon the present.

Herman Melville (1819–1891), an orphaned andill-educated New Yorker, went to sea as a youth and served eighteen adventuresome months on awhaler. “A whale ship was my Yale College and myHarvard,’’ he wrote. Jumping ship in the South Seas,he lived among cannibals, from whom he provi-dently escaped uneaten. His fresh and charmingtales of the South Seas were immediately popular,but his masterpiece, Moby Dick (1851), was not. This epic novel is a complex allegory of goodand evil, told in terms of the conflict between awhaling captain, Ahab, and a giant white whale,Moby Dick. Captain Ahab, having lost a leg to themarine monster, lives only for revenge. His pursuitfinally ends when Moby Dick rams and sinks Ahab’sship, leaving only one survivor. The whale’s exactidentity and Ahab’s motives remain obscure. In theend the sea, like the terrifyingly impersonal andunknowable universe of Melville’s imagination, simply rolls on.

Moby Dick was widely ignored at the time of its publication; people were accustomed to morestraightforward and upbeat prose. A disheartenedMelville continued to write unprofitably for someyears, part of the time eking out a living as a customsinspector, and then died in relative obscurity andpoverty. Ironically, his brooding masterpiece about

344 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

the mysterious white whale had to wait until themore jaded twentieth century for readers and forproper recognition.

Portrayers of the Past

A distinguished group of American historians wasemerging at the same time that other writers werewinning distinction. Energetic George Bancroft(1800–1891), who as secretary of the navy helpedfound the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845, hasdeservedly received the title “Father of AmericanHistory.’’ He published a spirited, superpatriotic his-tory of the United States to 1789 in six (originallyten) volumes (1834–1876), a work that grew out ofhis vast researches in dusty archives in Europe andAmerica.

Two other historians are read with greater pleasure and profit today. William H. Prescott

(1796–1859), who accidentally lost the sight of aneye while in college, conserved his remaining weakvision and published classic accounts of the con-quest of Mexico (1843) and Peru (1847). FrancisParkman (1823–1893), whose eyes were so defectivethat he wrote in darkness with the aid of a guidingmachine, penned a brilliant series of volumesbeginning in 1851. In epic style he chronicled thestruggle between France and Britain in colonialtimes for the mastery of North America.

Early American historians of prominence werealmost without exception New Englanders, largelybecause the Boston area provided well-stockedlibraries and a stimulating literary tradition. Thesewriters numbered abolitionists among their rela-tives and friends and hence were disposed to viewunsympathetically the slavery-cursed South. Thewriting of American history for generations to comewas to suffer from an antisouthern bias perpetuatedby this early “made in New England’’ interpretation.

Pioneering Historians 345

346 CHAPTER 15 The Ferment of Reform and Culture, 1790–1860

Chronology

1700s First Shaker communities formed

1794 Thomas Paine publishes The Age of Reason

1795 University of North Carolina founded

1800 Second Great Awakening begins

1819 Jefferson founds University of Virginia

1821 Cooper publishes The Spy, his first successfulnovel

Emma Willard establishes Troy (New York) Female Seminary

1825 New Harmony commune established

1826 American Temperance Society founded

1828 Noah Webster publishes dictionaryAmerican Peace Society founded

1830 Joseph Smith founds Mormon Church Godey’s Lady’s Book first published

1830-1831 Finney conducts revivals in eastern cities

1835 Lyceum movement flourishes

1837 Oberlin College admits female studentsMary Lyon establishes Mount Holyoke

SeminaryEmerson delivers “The American Scholar’’

address

1841 Brook Farm commune established

1843 Dorothea Dix petitions Massachusetts legislature on behalf of the insane

1846-1847 Mormon migration to Utah

1848 Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention held

Oneida Community established

1850 Hawthorne publishes The Scarlet Letter

1851 Melville publishes Moby DickMaine passes first law prohibiting liquor

1855 Whitman publishes Leaves of Grass

VARYING VIEWPOINTS

Reform: Who? What? How? and Why?

Early chronicles of the antebellum period univer-sally lauded the era’s reformers, portraying them

as idealistic, altruistic crusaders intent on improv-ing American society.

After World War II, however, some historiansbegan to detect selfish and even conservativemotives underlying the apparent benevolence ofthe reformers. This view described the advocates ofreform as anxious, upper-class men and womenthreatened by the ferment of life in antebellumAmerica. The pursuit of reforms like temperance,asylums, prisons, and mandatory public educationrepresented a means of asserting “social control.” Inthis vein, one historian described a reform move-ment as “the anguished protest of an aggrieved classagainst a world they never made.” In Michael Katz’s

treatment of early educational reform, proponentswere community leaders who sought a school sys-tem that would ease the traumas of America’s indus-trialization by inculcating business-oriented valuesand discipline in the working classes.

The wave of reform activity in the 1960sprompted a reevaluation of the reputations of theantebellum reformers. These more recent interpre-tations found much to admire in the authentic reli-gious commitments of reformers and especially inthe participation of women, who sought varioussocial improvements as an extension of their func-tion as protectors of the home and family.

The scholarly treatment of abolitionism is atelling example of how reformers and their cam-paigns have risen and fallen in the estimation of his-

Varying Viewpoints 347

torians. To northern historians writing in the latenineteenth century, abolitionists were courageousmen and women so devoted to uprooting the evil ofslavery that they were willing to dedicate their livesto a cause that often ostracized them from theircommunities. By the early twentieth century, how-ever, an interpretation more favorable to the Southprevailed, one that blamed the fanaticism of theabolitionists for the Civil War. But as the racial climate in the United States began to change by the mid-twentieth century, historians once againshowed sympathy for the abolitionist struggle, andby the 1960s abolitionist men and women wererevered as ideologically committed individuals ded-icated not just to freeing the enslaved but to savingthe moral soul of America.

Recently scholars animated by the modern femi-nist movement have inspired a reconsideration ofwomen’s reform activity. It had long been known, ofcourse, that women were active participants in chari-table organizations. But not until Nancy Cott, KathrynSklar, Mary Ryan, and other historians began to lookmore closely at what Cott has called “the bonds ofwomanhood” did the links between women’s domes-tic lives and their public benevolent behavior fullyemerge. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg showed in her studyof the New York Female Moral Reform Society, forexample, that members who set out at first to convertprostitutes to evangelical Protestantism and to closedown the city’s many brothels soon developed an ide-

ology of female autonomy that rejected male domi-nance. When men behaved in immoral or illegal ways,women reformers claimed that they had the right—even the duty—to leave the confines of their homesand actively work to purify society. More recently, historians Nancy Hewitt and Lori Ginzberg have challenged the assumption that all women reform-ers embraced a single definition of female identity.Instead they have emphasized the importance of classdifferences in shaping women’s reform work, whichled inevitably to tensions within female ranks. Givingmore attention to the historical evolution of femalereform ideology, Ginzberg has also detected a shiftfrom an early focus on moral uplift to a more class-based appeal for social control.

Historians of the suffrage movement haveemphasized another kind of exclusivity amongwomen reformers—the boundaries of race. EllenDuBois has shown that after a brief alliance with theabolitionist movement, many female suffragereformers abandoned the cause of black liberationin an effort to achieve their own goal with less con-troversy. Whatever historians may conclude aboutthe liberating or leashing character of early reform,it is clear by now that they have to contend with theways in which class, gender, and race dividedreformers, making the plural—reform movements—the more accurate depiction of the impulse to“improve” that pervaded American society in theearly nineteenth century.

For further reading, see page A10 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.