The Fires of Perfection

1. Lyman Beecher, celebrity minister, who inspired his eleven children to take leading roles in bringing about the millennium, but they did it on their own terms.. The Fires of Perfection Prophecies of the millennium —Revelations: 1,000 years of peace, triumph, and it all begins here? Benevolent associations—missionary zeal for reform: another sign of the Millennium? But “The Benevolent Empire” exempted Unitarians, lower class types, and Catholics as agents of “Antichrist,” and Beecher’s church burned to the ground

3. Charles Finney Conversion experience—Charles Finney urged people to get off the “anxious bench” and be reborn Free will and perfectionism—no predestination, “Do it!” emotionally Finney’s Rochester revival—transformation in six months Revivalism’s appeal to the middle class—reassurance from boom and bust economy; success a badge of moral character, so losing wealth fearsome Workers and church membership—religion can help you get ahead Evangelicalism bolsters individualism and equality—how?

4. Women’s Sphere • Women’s changing lives—marriage more “iffy,” but important, so church a refuge, a moral base • “Sisterhood” and social networks —recharge the emotional deficit from “domesticity” • Domesticity in Europe—middle class “Victorianism” • Decline in the birthrate—later marriages, birth control, expensive educations make parents think twice: assets now monetary burdens Catharine Beecher, and above, Queen Victoria, the domestic ideal, with one of her children. “Victorianism” came from her reign.

5. American Romanticism Walt Whitman made big bucks at Xmas. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Fennimore Cooper, and Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. • Romantic movement—emotion, intuition, individualism • Transcendentalist ideas—above everyday materialism • Emergence of American literature—self-confidence • Cooper and Wilderness—noble frontiersman • Thoreau and individualism—self-reliance • Melville and nature’s destructive power—individualism’s greed

6. The Age of Reform • The Shakers and “Utopia” —male/female God; celibate, communal • The Oneida Community and Complex Marriage —new role for women, “scientific” combinations John Humphrey Noyes; women of Oneida community

7. Carthage, Illinois, when Joseph Smith and his brother Hiram were taken out of jail and shot. The desperado was going to behead Smith when he was stopped. • Movement to restore the ancient church —Mormonism, a new Christianity: unity of church/state, strong work ethic, secret temple rituals, continuing divine revelation • City of Zion: Nauvoo—after Ohio, Missouri; despised by neighbors: baptism of the dead, eternal marriage, polygamy (plural marriage) • Robert Owen and New Harmony—failed secular utopias • Brook Farm—ditto Joseph Smith (Mormonism), Robert Owen (New Harmony) and George Ripley (Brook Farm).

8. Attack on drinking—four gallons/triple today’s: abstinence not just drunkenness • Common school movement—state support first wanted by workers? Overall, a slow movement • Female education—fragile female minds? Oberlin first coed college—End of Reading • Dorothea Dix and the insane—reported existing rampant abuses: more humane asylums Attempts to curtail drunkenness and all its results were seen as a crusade; Dorothea Dix, advocate for the mentally ill, and Horace Mann, campaigner for the common school; Below is Mary Lyon, founder of the first college for women, Mount Holyoke.

9. Lane Seminary Abolitionism William Lloyd Garrison, his newspaper The Liberator; he was a founder of American Anti-Slavery Society. • Free blacks oppose colonization—Lundy’s solution in newspaper The Genius of Universal Emancipation: soon opposed by Garrison • Garrison’s immediatism—colonization racist, unequal; slavery a moral not economic question • Geography of abolitionism—New England and religious New Englanders, but weak in cities and in business • Lane Seminary rebellion—Under Weld’s leadership, abolition blows up in revivalist Beecher’s face; students, blacks move to Oberlin, but still rowdy

10. Elijah P. Lovejoy, killed protecting his abolitionist printing press. • Black abolitionists—most favored peaceful change, but David Walker urged violence; Harriet Tubman (200) and U.R.R. • Divisions among abolitionists—Beechers The warehouse where Elijah Parish Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister and editor of the Alton Observer, and 20 of his supporters were standing guard over a newly arrived printing press from the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. This was the fourth press that Lovejoy had received for his paper. Three others already had been destroyed by people like the mob that would kill Lovejoy this night. split; Garrison goes radical, including women’s rights Frederick Douglass, young and old.

11. Sarah and Angelina Grimke • Seneca Falls convention —after getting dissed at anti-slavery meet, “Declaration of Sentiments” like D of I • Reform enters politics—effective for action over persuasion, but resisted • Struggle over prohibition—Maine • Censorship of the mails —anti-slavery pamphlets blocked • Gag rule—no anti-slavery petitions 1836-1844 Philadelphia abolitionists, including Lucretia Mott. Elizabeth Cady Stanton with child.