The Jacksonian era provided the greatest number of significant reform movements in American history. This chapter examines the nature of the reform impulse and the close ties among reform, religion, and the redefinition of women's roles in American life. During this period in which a millennial vision of Protestant Christianity inspired so many leaders of reform movements, women dominated church membership and played a critical role in many of the organizations that fought for social change in American society.

The chapter opens with Lyman Beecher, who along with his children played a significant role in many of the movements striving for perfection. Beecher viewed religion and reform as forces of stability, order, and control, but to his children they increasingly became ways to liberate the individual and effect social change. The varied activities of Beecher and his children illustrate both the diversity of the reform impulse and its growing radicalism.

The Transformation of American Evangelicalism

The reform movements of this era drew primarily upon two intellectual developments: revivalism and Romanticism. The Second Great Awakening represented the final repudiation of Calvinism and the doctrine of predestination as a majority viewpoint among religious leaders. In their place, revivalists led by Charles Grandison Finney preached the availability of salvation to all, if only sinners would exercise their free will and choose it. Spurred by this optimistic message, revivalists eventually endorsed the ideals of perfectionism (that individuals and society could become perfect) and the belief in millennialism (the reign of a thousand years of peace on earth prophesied in the Bible). Finney also adopted "new measures" to convert sinners—measures that preachers had first developed in frontier camp meetings. Among the most important of these practices was the active inclusion of women in the revivals and church work. Finney's revivals helped people adjust to the new market economy and the pressures they experienced in their daily lives by giving them the internal discipline necessary to succeed in the new competitive economy. The revivals also strengthened many Americans' belief in individualism and equality.

Revival and the Social Order

Women made up the greater number of converts at these revivals. Industrialization and the market revolution created a new middle class that embraced the doctrine of privacy, separating the home and family from society. As a result, women's roles in society during this period became increasingly centered on these private realms, a process celebrated by the ideal of domesticity. Denied employment opportunities and political rights, and often receiving little emotional support within their domestic circle, many women turned to religion and reform as ways to shape society. They also reached out to other women, joining together in benevolent organizations, church groups, and prayer meetings, in a common experience of "sisterhood." One significant consequence of these changes within middle-class families was the adoption of new techniques to ensure the success of their children, including the reduction of family size, a greater emphasis on education, and the growing prevalence of equality of inheritance among children.

Visionaries

Romanticism also stimulated the quest for perfectionism. An intellectual movement that began in Europe, Romanticism emphasized the unlimited potential of each individual. Like the revivals, it viewed emotion as a source of truth. Romanticism stimulated the emergence of a distinct American literature that wrestled with questions about the source of truth and the clash between the individual and society. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the leading romantic thinker of Jacksonian America. He called for a distinctive national literature and promoted Transcendentalism, an intensely individualistic philosophical movement that emphasized human dignity and the power of emotion. The Romantic movement produced a number of major writers who explored, with uniquely American voices, some of the complexities and contradictions of American culture.

Radical Reform

Some reformers turned to utopian communities in order to create a model society for the rest of the world to follow. Religious doctrine shaped many of these communities, such as the Shakers and the Oneida settlement; others, such as New Harmony, were secular and socialist in their orientation. All shared the belief in humans' ability to perfect their character and remove evil from society. Other reformers turned to humanitarian movements that sought to save individuals by combating social evils, which they equated with sin. Movements such as temperance, education reform, and the effort to establish asylums for the mentally ill all gained significant support and typified the approach of perfecting society by reforming individuals.

In the long run, the most important humanitarian reform movement of the period was abolitionism. William Lloyd Garrison, a Boston editor, established the ideals and program of the abolitionist movement. Viewing slavery as the greatest sin in the Republic, abolitionists called for the immediate end to the institution, and championed rights for African Americans. Free African Americans in northern communities also provided an important source of support for the movement. Abolitionism drew on the crusading idealism of the revivals and the beliefs in millennialism and perfectionism. Yet unlike many of other movements of the era, abolitionism attacked powerful groups in American society and championed African Americans in the face of a pervasive racism. In doing so, it precipitated strong and often violent opposition, leaving abolitionists as a small minority of northern society.

Nonetheless, abolitionism attracted considerable support from women who actively participated in church work. Eventually, several prominent female abolitionists, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, launched the women's rights movement at the Seneca Falls convention in 1848. Drawing a parallel between the oppression of women and slaves in American society, they called for greater educational and employment opportunities for women, enhanced legal rights in marriage, and—most controversially—the right to vote.

The emergence of the women's rights movement reflected the growing internal divisions within the abolitionist movement. In 1840 the movement split into a radical wing, headed by Garrison, and a more conservative wing, led by Tappan, that sought to end slavery through the political process. The anti-Garrisonians founded the Liberty party, the first of several antislavery political parties that would take shape over the next two decades.

Reform Shakes the Party System

Increasingly, other reformers also turned to political action. Advocates of temperance, abolition, and women's rights all sought to achieve their goals by passing legislation. The passage of the first statewide prohibition law in Maine in 1851 prompted a drive to pass similar laws in other states. The intrusion of these moral questions into the political arena increasingly disrupted the two national parties; the antislavery cause especially made it difficult to preserve support in both sections of the country. Although the party system still functioned, these reform movements weakened it considerably, as the political upheaval of the early 1850s would demonstrate.