US History -notes on the changes in religion

• Very few tax-supported schools.

• Had “odor of pauperism” as the schools taught children of poor people.

• However, supported by tax paid by wealthy in order for stability and democracy.

• These “brats” could cause problem later on as they could vote.

• Teachers were ill-educated and ill-trained.
• Education pushed by Horace Mann was known as “Schoolmaster of the Republic.”

5. Higher Goals for Higher Learning

• Second Awakening cause arising of new colleges, mostly in the South and West.

• Traditional-bound curriculum: Latin, Greek, math, and moral philosophy.

• First state-supported university was University of North Carolina in 1795.

• University of Virginia later started in 1819.

• Women’s education frowned upon as they thought too much learning would corrupt the feminine brain, eventually corrupting the family as well.
• New colleges for women emerged.

• Troy Female Seminary established by Emma Willard in 1821.
• Mount Holyoke Seminary established by Mary Lyon in 1837.

• Adults wanted more learning which meant more libraries, public lectures, and magazines.

6. An Age of Reform

• Reformers envisioned a perfect society which was free from war, alcohol, cruelty, discrimination, and slavery.

• Women behind these reforms as they allowed the women to get involved with public affairs.

• Dorothea Dix fought for better treatment for sufferers from insanity.

• Mentally insane people treated as beasts, often chained in jails or poor houses.
• Brought improved conditions and gained concept that insane people were not insane at will.

• American Peace Society formed, led by William Lad in 1828.

7. Demon Rum – The “Old Deluder”

• American Temperance Society founded in Boston, 1826.

• Implored drinkers to sign the temperance pledge and organize children’s club (Cold Water Army). Used pictures, pamphlets, and lectures to preach.

• T.S Arthur’s novel, Ten Nights in a Barroom and What I Saw There, about how a bar ruined a small town.
• Foes of Demon Drink adopted two attacks

• Remove the desire to drink and stress “temperance” rather than “teetotalism.”
• Punish those who did drink.

• Neal S. Dow sponsored the Main Law of 1851 which prohibited the manufacture and sale of liquor. Other states in North followed.

8. Women in Revolt

• American women faced better treatment than Europeans, where rape was punished only lightly.
• Ten percent of adult women remained “splinters”, which meant they didn’t marry at all.
• Men and women separated into distinct economic roles.

• Women were emotionally and spiritually weaker than men, but also artistic and refined.

• They were to teach the young how to be good and productive citizens of the Republic,

• Men were strong but rude, often barbaric, needed to be guided by their wife or otherwise turn into a beast.

• Women had life in home, nowhere else. Also called the “cult of domesticity.”
• The Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 in New York wrote a “Declaration of Sentiments”

• Argued that “all men and women are created equal” and sought for equality.

9. Wilderness Utopias

• Reformers built various “utopias”.
• Robert Owen founded in 1825 New Harmony, Indiana which sought for “communitarian” nature but failed quite miserably.
• Brook Farm in Massachusetts in 1841 which was well off at first but collapsed in debt.
• Oneida Community in New York in 1848 practiced free love, birth control, and eugenic selection of parents to produce their best offspring.

• Selling steel traps and plates helped them flourish for 30 years.

• The Shakers led by Mother Ann Lee began as a religious community.

• Prohibited sex and marriage which cut any offspring, making the community go extinct.

10. The Dawn of Scientific Achievement

• Early Americans interested in practical gadgets, not pure science.

• Jefferson invented a better plow.
• Nathaniel Bowditch wrote in navigation.
• Matthew Maury studied ocean winds and current.
• Benjamin Silliman was a Yale chemist and geologist for more than 50 years.
• Louis Agassiz was a Harvard biologist who insisted on original work.
• Asa Gray was a Harvard botanist and set standards for clarity and interest.
• John Audubon was a naturalist who painted birds with precise details.

• Medicine was still primitive.

• Bleeding was a common cure.
• Illness resulted from improper diet, horrible sanitation, germs, etc.
• Doctors were usually butchers and blacksmiths.

11. Artistic Achievement

• America still continued to imitate European styles of art such as architecture.
• Greek revival came between 1820 and 1850 with pointed arches and large windows.

• Thomas Jefferson was best American architect of his time most notably his home Monticello and the Universty of Virginia.

• Painting considered waste of time.
• In music, “darky” tunes was popular due to them being rhythmic and nostalgic.

12. The Blossoming of a National Literature

• American literature advanced starting from the 1820’s.

• Washington Irving wrote Knickerbocker’s History of New York and The Sketch Book which brought enormous fame.
• James Fenimore Cooper wrote the Leatherstocking Tales which had sales even among Europeans.
• William Cullen Bryant wrote poetry, one called “Thanatopsis”. Critics hardly believed it was written in “this side of the water.”

13. Trumpeters of Transcendentalism

• Transcendentalism, also known as “the Athens of America”, denied the theory of John Locke that all knowledge comes from the sense, and said knowledge “transcends” the senses.

• Everyone can reach an inner light and touch god, the “Oversoul.”

• Ralph Waldo Emerson was best known of the transcendentalists.

• Famous writing was The American Scholar which stressed individualism.

• Henry David Thoreau famous for Walden: Or Life in the Woods where he lived in a hut for two years living in simplicity.

• On the Duty of Civil Disobedience inspired Mahatma Gandhi and later on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

• Walt Whitman encouraged people to live freely with a “barbaric yelp.” His book was once banned in Boston.

14. Glowing Literary Lights

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a poet famous for his works: Evangeline,” "The Tales of Hiawatha," and "The Courtship of Miles Standish."
• John Greenleaf Whittier’s poems famous for being against inhumanity, injustice, and intolerance.
• James Russell Lowell was a political satirist against wrong.
• Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote “The Last Leaf” to honor the Boston Tea Party.
• There were also women writers.

• Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women .
• Emily Dickinson wrote nearly two thousand poems before she died.

• William Gillmroe Simms wrote about southern life during the American Revolution.

15. Literary Individualists and Dissenters

• Edgar Allen Poe was famous for his genre, horror and thrill. His well-known works are “The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and more.
• Two other writers reflected on their puritan belief with original sin.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter is about a lady who committed a sin of adultery and therefore had to wear a scarlet letter for life.
• Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a story on good and evil, was unpopular and Melville wrote unprofitably.

• Moby Dick was gained popularity only after during the twentieth century.

16. Portrayers of the Past

• George Bancroft helped found the Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1845 and received the title of "Father of American History."
• William H. Prescott wrote histories on the conquests of Mexico and Peru.