Lesson 3: Social and Cultural Change

Lesson Focus

As the nation matured, Americans sought a unique identity separate from Europe. This lesson explores the explosion of American art, literature, science, and social reform movements that shaped the country's distinct cultural landscape in the 1800s.

People to Know

Henry David Thoreau, Maria Mitchell, Joseph Smith, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Learning Objectives

• Identify key American artists, writers, and scientists and their contributions to the nation's new cultural identity.
• Explain the goals of new religious movements and communal experiments that reshaped American society.
• Discuss the temperance movement, analyzing its goals, methods, and role as a major social reform effort.

Feeling culturally inferior to Europe, many Americans in the early 1800s sought to establish a unique national identity.

Writers like James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville used American history and settings for their novels. Painters of the Hudson River School celebrated the nation's landscapes, while architects developed the Greek Revival style.

This cultural outpouring created a distinct American artistic and literary tradition, fostering national pride and proving America's creative genius.

The desire to prove American ingenuity extended to the sciences during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

Maria Mitchell made key discoveries in astronomy, Joseph Henry invented the electromagnetic motor, and Matthew Maury founded the science of oceanography, drastically improving sea navigation. American doctors also pioneered the use of ether as an anesthetic.

These breakthroughs earned the United States international respect and made lasting contributions to medicine, meteorology, and worldwide navigation.

Some reformers believed societal problems stemmed from competition and private ownership, leading them to seek alternative social structures.

Inspired by European socialism, leaders like Robert Owen founded cooperative communities such as New Harmony. Other groups, such as the one at Brook Farm, tried to combine manual labor with intellectual freedom.

Note that most of these utopian experiments ultimately failed, but they reflected a powerful desire to build a more perfect and cooperative society.

The period's spirit of change also sparked new religious and philosophical movements that challenged traditional beliefs.

Joseph Smith founded the rapidly growing Mormon Church, while the Shakers created isolated communities known for simplicity. The Unitarian Church and Transcendentalism, promoted by Henry David Thoreau, emphasized individual conscience and nature.

These movements diversified America's spiritual landscape and introduced new ideas about community, faith, and the goodness of humanity.

As new religions formed, a widespread religious revival called the Second Great Awakening swept across the nation.

This movement taught that people had a duty to improve society on Earth, not just prepare for the afterlife. Protestant denominations held massive revival meetings, while Catholic churches served immigrant communities with schools and charities.

Pay special attention to how this religious zeal became directly tied to the spirit of reform, inspiring believers to tackle social injustices.

Fueled by the reform spirit of the Second Great Awakening, many religious groups viewed alcohol as a primary cause of poverty and crime.

The temperance movement began in the United States to ban alcohol, persuading people to take pledges and demanding new laws. This effort led to the formation of the United States Temperance Union in 1833.

As a result, Maine passed the first state prohibition law in 1851, an example that a dozen other states soon followed.