From Confederation to Nation by Jonathan Atkins

Author:Jonathan Atkins [Atkins, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 19th Century, Modern, 18th Century, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), General
ISBN: 9781317425175
Google: B6BeCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-01-13T01:26:23+00:00

The Reform Impulse

In the Northeast especially, revivalism went beyond saving souls to include improving conditions in the world. Evangelicals like Lyman Beecher—a Yale graduate second only to Finney as the Northeast’s leading revivalist—feared that disestablishing New England’s Congregational Church would destroy morality in their states. The social changes accompanying urbanization and manufacturing expansion convinced the pious as well as skeptics that society stood on the verge of collapse. Irreverent behavior in urban working-class and poorer districts seemed particularly disturbing. Crime seemed to dominate the cities, and adult and juvenile gangs roamed districts rife with poverty, drunkenness, and gambling. More than 130 urban riots broke out from the 1810s through the 1830s, and the growing numbers of prostitutes and brothels reflected a wider breakdown of traditional morality. Among rural inhabitants, fights and lynching remained common, with dueling persisting in the South. Inspired by a sense of Christian duty and with a hope of bringing on the millennium, ministers reasoned that changing individuals’ behavior presented the best way to improve social conditions. Many with secular motives shared a desire to encourage improvement, and they agreed that the key lay in reforming individuals. Their efforts met with mixed success, but the intensity of their efforts made the reform impulse even more widespread than religious revivalism.

Reformers addressed the Union’s social ills mainly through “voluntary associations”—private groups organized to draw attention to problems and to propose remedies for them. Several interdenominational organizations in the Northeast formed what ministers called the “Evangelical United Front.” Clergymen like Beecher provided clerical leadership for much of the “Benevolent Empire,” which mainly sought to spread the gospel through assisting those in need, while wealthy laymen like New York entrepreneurs Arthur and Lewis Tappan provided funding. Several denominations formed local organizations to send missionaries to the western frontier; eventually the largest state groups united to form the American Home Missionary Society in 1826. Reports from missionaries of the conditions they confronted stirred the devout to form new associations to address specific problems. The American Bible Society, formed in 1816, and the American Tract Society, organized nine years later, printed religious literature with the goal of making them available to every family in the Union. The American Sunday School Union, organized in 1824, established schools in rural regions to impart Christian lessons. Charles Finney’s wife Lydia helped found the Female Moral Reform Society in 1839 to bring women out of prostitution, and several local societies offered medical care, set up orphanages, and distributed food to the poor.

Christian reformers overreached, though, when they promoted observance of Sunday as a national holy day. American Protestants long respected the first day of the week as the “Christian Sabbath,” a day devoted to worship, prayer, and spiritual concerns. In 1810, Congress passed a law requiring post offices to remain open on Sunday, regardless of local laws requiring businesses to close on the Sabbath. Because most postmasters also kept stores, the Sunday mail law meant that, on the “Lord’s Day,” churches in small communities now had to compete with bustling centers of activity.

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