U. S. History, 17A
Assignment 9
Assignments Page
Related sites for this topic
Previous or Next Study Guide
Today in United States History

 
Assignment 9
Nation of Nations
Chapter Twelve
The Fires of Perfectionism
Answer the following questions:
1. In 1826, who was the most celebrated minister of the Republic? What was his goal? 
I. Revivalism and the Social Order
2. Who is being described in this quote: "His power over an audience was such that when he described the descent of a sinner into hell, those in the back of the hall rose to witness the final plunge."
3. To get his message across to people, Finney popularized new measures or teachings. Identify four of them.
4.Because society during the Jacksonian era was undergoing such deep and rapid changes, evangelical revivalists stressed the need for individuals to undergo ___ ?
5. Finney rejected many religious doctrines of Calvinism, including predestination, because ___ ?
6. Finney, rather, emphasized the doctrine of ___ , which suggested that all men and women ____ . By the 1830s, Finney preached not merely faith in human progress, but human ___
7. This new theology, called ___ , asserted that all Christians should aim at "___". And a true Christian would not rest until ___ .   Revival audiences responded to the call for individual and social reform partly because _____.
8. Where in the north did evangelical religion prove to be strongest? Which city epitomized that environment?
9. Why was Rochester a city in crisis in 1830-31? What helped bring order to this city?
10. To whom did Finney's revivals appeal especially? Why? Surprisingly, ___ was linked to church membership.
12. In 1794, who organized the Bethel church?  Why?
13. By 1840, what percent of the adult population was connected with some church? What were the big 4 Protestant denominations? Which had the largest membership? 
II. Women's Sphere
13. Female converts to religion outnumbered men by ___ to ___. Why did church membership improve young women's chances of marriage?
14. Except for the frontier areas, why was home manufacturing no longer essential in the Jacksonian era?
15. This growing separation of the household from the workplace meant that the home took on ___ and was idealized as a ___.
16. Who was at the center of this haven? Upon what notion was this based?
17. Catharine Beecher argued that women exercised important power as ___.
18. What was the purpose of a 'parlor' in homes of this period?
19. How did Catharine Beecher compare the home with the school?  What did she believe that teachers should teach?
III. American Romanticism
20. Along with evangelical Protestantism, what was the second major current of thought that shaped the reform movement of the Jacksonian era? In what  ways did it differ generally from the Enlightenment?
21. In the United States, Romanticism greatly influenced the Transcendentalists. Transcendentalists also emphasized ___ over ___ , seeking a spiritual _____ .
22. What did Transcendentalists want to transcend?
23. Who is being quoted: "Trust thyself.  Every heart vibrates to that iron string."
24. Who was the first distinctive American novelist? What did he focus on in his Leatherstocking series written between 1823 - 1841?
25. Who is Natty Bumppo? What did he represent?
26. What was the concern of many of the Romantic writers of the period?
27. Thoreau argued in Walden (1854) that only in ___ could one find true independence.
28. For what is Captain Ahab the prototype in Melville's Moby Dick (1851)?
IV. The Age of Reform
29. By 1830, what was the annual per capita consumption of alcohol? What were 5 of the social costs of such behavior?
30. What did the temperance movement undertake as its goal? How did it affect the per capita consumption of alcohol by 1845?
31. What were 2 social reasons for this success of the temperance movement:
32. As defenders of the home, why did the temperance movement appeal so strongly to women?
33. Horace Mann hailed education as ___ . He contended that it would ___ .
34. What three reforms of public education were adopted by Massachusetts under Mann's leadership? By 1860, where were most high schools located?  Why?  In which part of the country did educational reforms succeed best? least? Why? 
V. Abolitionism
35. Who was William Lloyd Garrison? What was the name of his newspaper? When did he begin to publish it?
36. What were the 3 things that Garrison repudiated, denounced or rejected about the contemporary movement against slavery?
37. What was the name of the national organization to abolish slavery that Garrison helped to found in 1833? Who were his co-founders? How many Americans belonged to an abolitionist society in the years before the Civil War?
38. Who were Frederick Douglas and Harriet Tubman?
39. Who were the leaders of the northern mobs against the abolitionists?  Why?
40. What did Garrison call 'a covenant with death and an agreement with hell'? 
The reason that Garrison was so opposed to the Constitution is because of the contents of the 5th Amendment. That amendment, among other things, denies to the Congress of the United States the power to deprive any citizen of property 'without due process of law'. Since slaves were considered 'property' by all of the slaveholding states at this time, Garrison believed that the Constitution thus protected slavery from being abolished. 
41.What were 5 disadvantages suffered by women in American society in the 1840s? Why did women find it easy to identify with the situation of slaves?
42. Who were the two women who launched the women's rights movement? Why?
43. What were the 5 resolutions adopted at the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848? Which one did women increasingly demand as the means to change society? 
The Last of the Mohicans (set during the Seven Years' War, 1856 - 1863.)  Please go to this site, read the selection there, and answer the following questions:
44. Identify: Hawkeye, Cora /Alice Munro, Magua, Chingachgook Uncas, Heyward
45. Why does Magua kidnap Alice, Cora and Heyward the first time?
46. What happens when they all finally arrive at Fort William Henry?
47. How does Hawkeye rescue Alice from Magua's camp?
48. What happens to Cora?
49. Who does Uncas turn out to be?
50. What happens to Magua and Uncas? 
If you have some spare time, you might enjoy the following:

  'James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses', by Mark Twain
 
 

 
Assignments Page
Revised April 6, 2008

by Tom Gallup