I.  Life in the cities

• Growth in number and size of cities
• 40 years before Civil War saw most rapid urbanization in American history
• Number of towns with more than 2,500 inhabitants jumped from 56 to 350 during that period from 1820-1850
• N.Y. largest, with over 1,000,000 people when combined with Brooklyn
• Large numbers of those living in large cities were transients--estimated in NYC that 1/2 of people moved every 10 years
• Life in cities
• Physical setting
• crowded housing--no high rises yet, so lots of people living in little space
• problems with water and sewers--usually left to private companies at first, finally city takes over
• Police and fire protection
• in private hands at first--nightwatch and patrols
• gradually moved to professional, especially with police
• Entertainment
• Theatre--different types for different classes--still Shakespeare was performed for all types (and appreciated)
• Sports--horse racing, boxing, running, and baseball
• Urban clubs--from sporting clubs, social clubs, to elitist associations such as Freemasons
• Entertainment for lower classes found in the yards and streets--served as gathering places for a variety of events--chatting, political rallies, etc.
• Change in living patterns in cities
• In the cities, people began to live apart from their work--no longer home and business always combined
• Wealthy elite gradually moved farther and farther away from the city center
• away from smells and dangers of city, immigrants, migrants from the countryside, and lower classes
• saw these lower-class people as polluting urban society--they were troublemakers
• horse-drawn streetcars aid move
• Differences of wealth
• The rich control large part of wealth in cities
• Rich form an aristocracy of wealth--brings them power
• in NYC, by 1845, wealthiest 5 percent of population owned more than 80% of all wealth
• Day-to-day existence
• improvements in manufacturing and improved machine tools led to
• mass production of products
• reduced labor costs led to lower prices and faster development of products--sewing machine
• world became a smaller place with spread of telegraph--news of events elsewhere reached city people quickly
• for most in city, daily life still a precarious existence because of cyclical nature of economy
• Life in the country also changes
• Agriculture was affected by new inventions
• Cyrus McCormick introduces a mechanical reaper in 1834, making harvesting of wheat faster and easier
• John Deere developed a steel-tipped plow in 1837, made it easier to cut through soil--opened the prairies to farming
• Growth of crops also improved by introduction of better animal feed and the use of chemical fertilizers
• Spread of railroads
• stimulated economic growth of Midwest, tied the farms to the market
• led to increased settlement, growth of towns and cities
• Chicago and Milwaukee became the entrepot's of the new Midwest

• Second Great Awakening
• Begins around the turn of the century and runs through the 1830s
• Builds upon the evangelical movement that grew during the late 18th century
• Lyman Beecher (New England) and Charles G. Finney (upstate New York) helped spark the movement with their sermons
• The religious fervor in upstate New York, around Rochester, was so fierce that it became know as "the Burned Over District"--one person noted that "You could not go on the streets and hear any conversation, except upon religion."
• Helps break down the establishment of religion in many states--talk about Baptists and Methodists in Virginia
• Also leads to efforts to make political participation more widespread among white males and to a series of reform movements, especially in the North
• Utopian movements
• Developed as attempt to form cooperative communities (communes) as alternatives to competitive, materialistic capitalism
• Mormons
• Joseph Smith, who grew up in Burned Over district of NY, formed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) in 1820s
• Smith based this new religion on what he claimed was a newly found book of the Bible, the Book of Mormon
• he quickly gains followers and enemies, moving steadily westward to escape persecution (received hostile reception wherever he went because many saw his claims as undermining authority of the Bible)
• 1843, Smith creates even more controversey by claiming yet another revelation--polygamy
• in 1844, Smith jailed in Illinois under charges of treason, where he and his brother murdered by a mob
• Brigham Young takes over, moves Mormons west to Utah
• Shakers
• Began in late 18th century, but really began to grow during the 2d Great Awakening
• Centered in upstate New York, one of the most unusual utopian movements
• Believed strongly in perfectionism, the surrender of all worldly property to the community, and devoting oneself to bringing about the millennial kingdom of heaven
• Shakers believed in absolute chastity--sex is a sin, pure and simple
• Sect would continue through converting others
• Shakers pretty much died out by the beginning of the Civil War
• Brook Farm and the Transcendentalists
• Transcendentalists
• drew somewhat on the ideas expressed by British Romantic writers
• transcendentalism embraced a theory of the individual that rested on a distinction between "reason" and understanding"
• reason being individual's innate capacity to grasp beauty and truth by giving full expression to the instincts and emotions, understanding (objective, empirical thought) was a limited form of reason (limited by society's repression of instinct)--one thus becomes transcendent of traditional bounds
• the self became the center of life and thought--subjective analysis, not scientific reasoning became the mode of approaching human problems
• Ralph Waldo Emerson argued that in nature, all forms existed not as objective realities, but as subjective "expressions of some property inherent in man the observer."
• leaders of the transcendentalist movement included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Henry David Thoreau
• concentrated near Concord, Mass.
• Brook Farm
• Boston transcentendentalist George Ripley and Bronson Alcott established Brook Farm in 1841 as experimental community in West Roxbury, Mass.
• individuals would gather to create a new society permitting every member to have full opportunity for self-realization
• everyone would share equally in labor of community so all could share too in leisure
• tensions plagued experiment from the start, when fire breaks out and destroys main building in 1847, falls apart
• The Dial--edited by Margaret Fuller, newspaper of Transcendentalists
• Temperance
• attacks on "demon rum"
• moved for Sunday closing laws
• supported by employers, who deplored "St. Monday"
• helped garner support for prohibition in a number of northern states (except for "medicinal purposes")
• Asylums and Prisons--Dorothea Dix gets her start in Mass. attempting to reform asylums
• Dix's report to the Mass. legislature on facilities for the insane left it shocked
• Stated that inmates were confined in "cages, closets, stalls, pens!  Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience."
• Dix suggested that an asylum with trained attendants be set up for the insane
• Dix and others moved to get more humane treatment throughout the nation for inmates of public facilities--insane, deaf, dumb, and blind, and prisons
• Public education
• 1800--no public schools outside of New England
• 1860--every state has some form of public education
• Horace Mann
• heads Mass. state board of education
• Mann claimed well-educated population essential to maintaining democracy
• est. minimum school year (6 mos.), formalized training of teachers, emphasized reading and writing, emphasized applied skills rather than religious training
• Public education accepted in North as businessmen learned that it allowed one to instill basic values in children at an early age
• work hard and succeed
• accept the instructions of your superiors
• do not envy rich--God determines who will be rich or poor and you can't change it
• Abolition
• abolitionist movement built up force again (following emancipation in northern states) in 1817, with formation of the American Colonization Society
• pushed for gradual, compensated emancipation
• return of blacks to Africa
• American Colonization Society's conservative views of emancipation challenged by more radical voices
• black abolitionists called for no colonization--most were native born Americans
• David Walker, a free black from Boston, called for a rebellion to crush slavery
• In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison begins The Liberator, a newspaper dedicated to spreading his radical abolitionist message
• Garrison called for immediate emancipation and equal rights for blacks
• he argued that Americans should stop supporting or participating in government, because it was immoral and illegal
• northern African Americans supported Garrison's efforts
• white and black abolitionists often sharply disagree on goals and methods
• many white's sought only to abolish slavery, had no thought of treating African Americans as social or political equals
• black abolitionists, often led by Frederick Douglas (an escaped slave) pushed for full equality
• Being abolitionist dangerous--1837, abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy murdered in Illinois by angry mob
• American Anti-Slavery Society forms in 1833
• largest abolitionist organization in U.S.
• in 1839, AA-SS split over two issues:
• whether to form political party and run candidate for office (Garrison opposed any form of participation in government, said it legitimized illegal govt.)
• role of women in organization
• Abolitionists petitioned Congress
• during early 1830s, abolitionists flooded Congress with petitions calling for an end to slavery in D.C.
• to stop these petitions from interrupting business (which was their primary goal), southerners in government get Congress to pass "gag rule" which automatically tabled any abolitionist petitions (stopping any discussion of it)
• "gag rule" causes a stink, even among congressmen who have no sympathy for abolitionists--overturned in 1845