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The Second Great Awakening And Reform In The 19TH Century

The Second Great Awakening And Reform In The 19TH Century

The Second Great Awakening was a great religious movement that emerged in the nineteenth century during the Antebellum era. The central message of this movement was that anyone could achieve salvation, including the ordinary people, through personal experiences and by living a righteous life. Additionally, the revival movement preached the message of humanity improvement and perfection through faith (religion) and reforms (Locks et al., 2013). Accordingly, the Second Great Awakening attracted many and led to the rise of many denominations and reform movements such as transcendentalism, temperance, abolition, and women’s rights.

Movements that impacted society the most were transcendentalism and women’s rights. Transcendentalism was a movement by an intellectual community that began from the North East in the early 1820s. Transcending in this context means going beyond the ordinary sense to gain personal insights and appreciate a deeper reality (Corbett et al., 2014). Transcendentalists believed that everyone could gain an exceeded rational understanding of the world. Essentially, they celebrated the uniqueness of individual emotions and emphasized individuals’ dignity, exalting optimism, self-reliance, and freedom.

Furthermore, the women’s rights movement rose from the abolition movements, led by two women, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, who played major roles in fighting slavery to achieve female equality. Women in the 19th century were not formerly indoctrinated and could not engage in activities like voting. Therefore, the women’s rights movement aimed to emancipate women; it advocated for women’s rights, embraced feminism, and argued that men and women were created equally.

In conclusion, transcendentalism and the women’s rights movements, inspired by the Second Great Awakening, majorly impacted society. These movements continue to affect the society to date. For instance, women today have equal rights to men in social, economic, and political aspects. Also, feminist organizations that advocate for societal change, fight discrimination, promote feminism, and fight for women’s rights, like the National Organization for Women, still exist. Similarly, the impact of transcendentalism is observed in today’s society in music, movies, articles, and poetry, among others. All these are products of free thought, where people express their opinions, which was the main idea of transcendentalism.

References

Corbett, P., Janssen, V., Lund, J., Pfannestiel, T., Waskiewicz, S., & Vickery, P. (2014). U.S. history (Openstax). Openstax.

Locks, C., Mergel, S., Roseman, P., Spike, T., & Lasseter, M. (2013). History in the Making. University of North Georgia Press.

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Question 


Reflect on the various reform movements that emerged from the Second Great Awakening (i.e., transcendentalism, temperance, abolition, women’s rights, mental health).

The Second Great Awakening And Reform In The 19TH Century

Which two movements do you believe had the most profound impact on society during the early to mid-1800s? How does contemporary society continue to be affected by these efforts?

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