Second Great Awakening

Hour: 7

Chapter 10 Essay

The Second Great Awakening played a major role in shaping our society in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. The Second Great Awakening started off in Connecticut in the 1790’s by Congregationalist. They made up the bulk of the revivalists and worked to spread the faith of Christianity throughout American. People readily accepted faith because America and its society were changing so rapidly. They felt that they would be able to seek solitude in faith with others to avoid being caught up in the flurry of change occurring around them. Revivalist started to focus their efforts to the west where they set up camps and hundreds of people flocked to come hear the sermons. The primary thing that that the revivalist preached was that people had a choice if they would sin or not so this gave them control of whether they went to heaven or hell. This made people feel that they more in control of their own lives and began to question authority. The Second Great Awakening in the North affected abolition, the temperance movement, and the cult of domesticity because the it made people want take control of their lives and also change aspects of society. The Abolition movement was only prominent in the northern states at the time and the reformers were calling out for all blacks to freed and for them to have equal political rights, but not necessarily equal social rights. The temperance movement was trying to eliminate alcohol from society as to improve the lives of abuses women and children and was also supported by the mills so that their workers were not out getting drunk every night. Finally, the Cult of Domesticity was a value system that was used by the upper and middle classes in both America and Britain that emphasized a woman’s role in a household the dynamics of a properly functioning family.

As the Second Great Awakening spread, the abolition movement went along with it. People began fell more in control of their lives so they began to try and change many aspects of their society that they didn’t approve of such as slavery. Opposition to slavery had always been around but true abolition started in 1777 when Vermont was the first state to make slavery illegal. Rhode Island then banned importation of slaves in 1778 and Pennsylvania worked on gradual emancipation in the 1780’s. As the Second Great Awakening grew rapidly, many more people began to see slavery as immoral and wrong. Some of these people were Theodore D. Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Elizur Wright. They had all taken up beliefs in the revivalist movement by the 1830’s and worked to influence the emancipation of all slaves. William Garrison was a radical who called out for immediate emancipation for slaves through his newspaper The Liberator. Many abolitionists supported him along with free blacks. Theodore Weld was well known