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| 38220966 | Deists | a group of people that relied on reason rather than revelation (science over Bible); they rejected the concept of original sin and denied Christ's divinity, but did believe in a Supreme Being who created the universe | |
| 38220967 | Unitarian faith | a religious sect that believed God existed in only one person instead of the Trinity; they stressed the essential goodness of human nature and their belief in free will; this appealed mostly to intellectuals who preferred rationalism/optimism to the strict Calvinist doctrine | |
| 38220968 | The Second Great Awakening | a new wave of religious revivals that took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century (affected even greater numbers of people than the first Awakening); it converted many people, tore down and rebuilt countless religious sects, and inspired a new evangelicalism in many areas of society | |
| 38220969 | Peter Cartwright | the best known of the Methodist "circuit riders," who were traveling frontier preachers; he traveled for decades from Tennessee to Illinois calling for sinners to repent; he had a very aggressive approach that looked back at the emotionalism of the First Great Awakening | |
| 38220970 | Charles Grandison Finney | the greatest of the revival preachers who was trained as a lawyer, but abandoned his profession to become an evangelist after a powerful conversion as a young man; he had a captivating message with great oratory and pungency; he was an innovator, even convincing women to pray aloud in public; he preached in Rochester and New York City | |
| 38220971 | Joseph Smith | founded the Mormon religion after reportedly receiving golden plates from an angel | |
| 38220972 | The Mormons | a new religion started by Joseph Smith based on the plates given to him by an angel; it received much opposition in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, and Smith was killed; Brigham Young moved the followers to Utah where they set up a properous fronteir theocracy; their practice of polygamy caused much unrest | |
| 38220973 | Brigham Young | leader of Mormons following Joseph Smith who had very little schooling, but escaped persecution by leading them to Utah in 1846-1847; the agriculture there prospered as did the population; he himself had as many as 27 wives and 56 children | |
| 38220974 | Horace Mann | brilliant and idealistic graduate of Brown University who effectively campaiged for more/better schoolhouses, longer school terms, higher teacher pay, and and expanded curriculum in Massachusetts; his influence spread to other states, although education often remained a luxury instead of necessity | |
| 38220975 | Noah Webster | added to educational advances in America as he developed "reading lessons" for children in the nineteenth century that were partly designed to promote patriotism; he also devoted 22 years to his famous dictionary published in 1828 that standardized the American language | |
| 38220976 | William H. McGuffey | a teacher-preacher who wrote grae-school readers that hammered lessons in morality, patriotism, and idealism; published in the 1830s, "McGuffey's Readers" sold 122 million copies in the following decades | |
| 38220977 | Emma Willard | helped attain women's schools ar a secondary level in the 1820s as she established the Troy (New York) Female Seminary (1821); Oberlin College in Ohio openned its doors to women 6 years later | |
| 38423913 | Mary Lyon | established the women's school Mount Holyoke Seminary (later college) in Massachusetts in 1837 | |
| 38423914 | Lyceum lecture association | provided platforms for speakers in areas such as science, literature, and moral philosoohy; talkers would travel thousands of miles on lyceum circuits, speaking to many audiences | |
| 38423915 | Dorthea Dix | a reformer who worked to improve the treatment of the mentally ill in asylums; she herself had ill health, but she persistently pushed for better conditions and convinced the population that the demented were not willfully perverse but mentally ill | |
| 38423916 | American Peace Society | an organization established in 1828 that agitated for peace led by William Ladd; their efforts helped the international organizations for collective security of the twentieth century, but had major setbacks during the Crimean War and Civil War | |
| 38423917 | American Temperance Society | formed at Boston in 1826 that implored drinkers to sign the temperance pledge and school children to remain "temperate"; they used pictures, pamphlets, and lurid lectures (led at times by reform drunkards); they stressed temperance over complete elimination of intoxicants | |
| 38423918 | Maine Law of 1851 | a statute passed by Maine and sponsored by Neal S. Dow ("Father of Prohibition") that prohibited the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor; some states followed, however the attempts were deceptive, as many states repealed them, declared them unconstitutional, or openly flouted them | |
| 38423919 | Lucretia Mott | a women's rights movement leader and Quaker who began her fight when she and her fellow female delegates were not recognized to the London antislavery convention of 1840 | |
| 38464837 | Elizabeth Cady Stanton | a mother of seven who insisted on leaving "obey" out of her marriage ceremony to advocate the suffrage of women | |
| 38464838 | Susan B. Anthony | a lecturer for women's rights who exposed herself fearlessly to rotten garbage and vulgar epithets; she became such a conspicuous advocate of female rights that progressive women everywhere were called "Suzy Bs" | |
| 38464839 | Seneca Falls Convention | a feminist convention that met in 1848 where Stanton read a "Declaration of Sentiments" in which the spirit of the Declaration of Independence declared that "all men and women are created equal"; one resolution from the convention demanded the ballot for females; in launched the modern women's rights movement | |
| 38464840 | Robert Owen | founded a communal, "utopian" society in 1825 at New Harmony, Indiana; little harmony prevailed there, as it attracted not only hard-working visionaries, but also a sprinkling of radicals, work-shy theorists, and scoundrels; the colony sank under contradiction and confusion | |
| 38464841 | Brook Farm | started in 1841 in Massachusetts and comprised of a brotherly/sisterly cooperation of 20 intellectuals committed to the philosophy of transcendentalism; they collapsed under debt after a fire in 1846 destroyed a recently built communal building; this community inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, "The Blithedale Romance" | |
| 38464842 | Oneida Community | a radical experiment founded in New York in 1848 that practiced free love ("complex marriage"), birth control, and the selection of parents to produce superior offspring; the enterprise flourished for over 30 years mainly because its artisans superior steel traps and Oneida Community (silver) Plate | |
| 38464843 | Matthew Maury | an oceanographer who wrote on ocean winds and currents that promoted safety, speed, and economy; he was one of the few Americans that developed his own observations rather than borrowing and adapting from Europeans | |
| 38464844 | Benjamin Stillman | most influential American scientist of the early nineteenth century who was a pioneer chemist and geologist who taught and wrote at Yale College for over 50 years | |
| 38464845 | Louis Agassiz | a distighuished French-Swiss immigrant who was a path-breaking student of biology and insisted on original research and hated the resigning overemphasis on memory work; served for 25 years at Harvard College | |
| 38464846 | Asa Gray | professor of Harvard College who was an innovator in American botany; he published over 350 books, monographs, and papers that set new standards for clarity and interest | |
| 38464847 | John Audubon | a naturalist who painted wild fowl in the natural habitat and wonderfully illustrated "Birds of America" which attained considerable popularity; a society for the protection of birds was named after him | |
| 38464848 | Sylvester Graham | made the fad diet of whole-wheat bread and crackers that proved highly popular | |
| 38464849 | Gilbert Stuart | a competent painter of Rhode Island who painted in Britain for competition; he produced several portraits of Washington that somewhat idealized/dehumanized | |
| 38464850 | Charles Wilson Peale | a painter from Maryland who painted about 60 portraits of Washington, who sat patiently for only 14 of them | |
| 38464851 | John Trumbull | a painter who captured the scenes and spirit of the Revolutionary War, in which he fought, on many striking canvases | |
| 38464852 | Hudson River School | an America art movement that turned towards local landscapes for inspiration, particularly in the New England area | |
| 38464853 | Daguerreotype | a crude photo graph that was perfected in 1839 by Louis Daguerre; this provided great competition for portrait painters | |
| 38464854 | Knickerbocker group | an American literature association that enabled America for the first time to boast of literature to match its magnificent landscapes; this was a result of the upsurge of nationalism | |
| 38464855 | Washington Irving | the first American to win international recognition as a literary figure; he combined a pleasant style with quiet humor and used both American and English themes; he greatly astonished Europeans with his sophisitcation and beautiful technique | |
| 38464856 | James Fenimore Cooper | the first American novelist (Irving was first general writer) to gain world fame and make New World themes respectable; he wrote countless novels that had a wide sale among Europeans, many who perceived Americans as brutes from birth; he explored the viability and destiny of America's republican experiment by contrasting the values of natural men of the wilderness with artificial modern civilization | |
| 38464857 | William Cullen Bryant | a member of the Knickbocker group from Massachusetts that wrote exceptional poetry at a very young age; he continued with poetry, but edited for the New York Evening Post for a living; he set a model for journalism that was dignified, liberal, and conscientious | |
| 38485631 | Transcendentalism | an American ideological/literary movement of the 1830s that had foreign influence of German romantic philosophers and religions of Asia; they believed truth "transcends" the senses and cannot be found by observation alone; every person has this light that can illuminate and put them in direct touch with the "Oversoul"; many of the members had personal commitments to self-reliance, self-culture, and self-discipline | |
| 38485632 | Ralph Waldo Emerson | best known transcendentalist from Boston who was both poet and philosopher; he was highly influential through his vibrant essays/literary works that had the individualistic mood of self-reliance, self-improvement, self-confidence, optimism, and freedom; his ideals reflected those of an expanding America (gave him increasing popularity) | |
| 38485633 | Henry David Thoreau | a transcendentalist and close colleague of Emerson who was a poet, mystic, and nonconformist; he condemned a government that supported slavery and refused to pay his tax (jailed for a night); his greatest writings were "Walden," a record of two years he spent in the wilderness, and "Civil Disobedience" | |
| 38485634 | Walt Whitman | a transcendentalist and poet of Brooklyn whose famous collection of poems "Leaves of Grass" gave free reign to his gushing genius ("barbaric yawp"); he was highly romantic, emotional, and unconventional and spoke openly and frankly on touchy subjects (i.e. sex) | |
| 38485635 | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | one of the most popular poets of America whose knowledge of European literature supplied him with many themes, but most of his most admired were based on American traditions | |
| 38485636 | John Greenleaf Whittier | a Quaker who was the uncrowned poet laureate of the antislavery crusade, and was highly important in social action; his poems cried aloud against inhumanity, injustice, and intolerance | |
| 38485637 | James Russell Lowell | an American poet who was also a distinguished essayist, literary critic, editor, and diplomat; he was also remembered as a political satirist, especially on the Mexican War | |
| 38485638 | Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes | taught anatomy at Harvard Medical School and was also a prominent poet, essayist, novelist, lecturer, and wit; he regarded Boston as the "hub of the universe"; one poem was a tribute to the last "white Indian" of the Boston Tea Party, which applied to himself | |
| 38485639 | Louisa May Alcott | a woman writer of Massachusetts who worked alongside Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller; she wrote "Little Women" and other books to support her mother and sisters | |
| 38485640 | Emily Dickenson | a woman poet of Massachusetts who lived as a recluse but created her own original world through poetry; she explored universal themes such as nature, love, death, and immortality; two thousand of her poems were found after her death and published | |
| 38485641 | William Gilmore Simms | a Southern novelist who wrote 82 books (a lot!) with themes that dealt with the southern frontier in colonial days and during the Revolutionary War | |
| 38485642 | Edgar Allan Poe | an eccentric genius who suffered terribly during his childhood and his experiences then reflected into his dark works; he reflected a morbid sensibility distinctly at odds with the usually optimistic tone of American culture (for this reason, he could have been even more prized by Europeans than Americans); he died at an early age from excessive drinking | |
| 38485643 | Nathaniel Hawthorne | a writer who reflected the continuing Calvinist obsession with original sin and with the never-ending struggle between good and evil; two great works of his include "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Marble Faun" | |
| 38485644 | Herman Melville | an orphaned and ill-educated New York writer with interesting influences from jumping ships; he had fresh and charming tales of the South Seas which were instantly popular, but his world-renowned novel, "Moby Dick," did not gain popularity for decades | |
| 38485645 | George Bancroft | historian and secretary of the navy who helped found the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1845; received the title "Father of American History" as he published a spirited, superpatriotic history of the United States to 1789 in six volumes | |
| 38485646 | William H. Prescott | an American historian still read today that published classic accounts of the conquest of Mexico (1843) and Peru (1847) | |
| 38485647 | Francis Parkman | an American historian who wroted a brilliant series of volumes beginning in 1851; he chronicled the struggle between France and Britain in colonial times for the mastery of North America in an epic style |
