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okay so we've been talking about the
0:02 Second Great Awakening and its context
0:04 in early 19th century America the Second
0:08 Great Awakening was this period of
0:10 religious revival that was kind of at
0:13 its Hotpoint in 1822 1840 and in the
0:17 last couple of videos we've been talking
0:18 about just the nature of the society
0:21 that produced the Second Great Awakening
0:23particularly how they responded to
0:26changes and how people related to each
0:28other in business and also just broader
0:30social changes like the expansion of
0:33American democracy and the expansion of
0:35American Territory west so in this last
0:38video I want to talk about some of the
0:41outgrowth of the Second Great Awakening
0:43so why do we care so much that there was
0:46this period of religious revival what
0:48did it lead to in American life and
0:51there are two major things that were
0:53directly related to the Second Great
0:56Awakening in this early 19th century new
0:59religious movements in the United States
1:01some of which are still with us today
1:03and even more importantly for the time
1:05period major reform movements including
1:08the movement for abolition the end of
1:11slavery which is going to lead to the
1:12outbreak of the Civil War so let's look
1:15a little bit closer at these two things
1:16so as we've talked about the second
1:19great awakening promoted both the idea
1:21that one should try to create heaven on
1:24earth and also a more democratic
1:29approach to religion in general that it
1:32didn't matter who you were if you were a
1:35man a woman white black enslaved free
1:38you were still entitled to a personal
1:41relationship with God and a chance at
1:43Salvation so one of the things that's
1:45meant in this time period is that
1:46there's just a lot of religious
1:48experimentation a lot of new American
1:52religions emerge at this time period
1:55some of which are still with us today
1:57some of which are not this here is a
2:01representation of the shakers
2:04which were a religious community of they
2:07embrace kind of simplicity they
2:09separated the sexes
2:11they practice celibacy just as kind of
2:16trying to make their daily lives more
2:19pure and unfortunately the celibacy part
2:24meant that they more or less died out by
2:27the 1940s although there are a handful
2:29of shakers who are still alive today and
2:31they were called the shakers because
2:33they would have these kind of ecstatic
2:34religious experiences which you can see
2:37are kind of similar to what happened in
2:39the camp meetings so even though they
2:41didn't have sex they would kind of get
2:43out their ecstasy in this process of
2:46these big circle dances which people
2:48looked at and they said they seemed like
2:50they were shaking so they were the
2:51shakers on the other side of the
2:53spectrum there was the Oneida community
2:56which was led by a man named John
3:00Humphrey Noyes and they preached the
3:03idea that one should have no earthly
3:05attachments basically and that meant
3:08also to a spouse so they believed in was
3:11called complex marriage or what we would
3:16really call free love there was no such
3:18thing as an individual marriage that
3:20women and men could have sex with
3:22whomever they pleased it's interesting
3:24that approaches to sex were very central
3:27to these religious movements and
3:30probably the most important religious
3:31movement to come out of this time period
3:33was the Church of Jesus Christ of
3:35latter-day saints
3:36also known as the Mormons who were
3:39founded by Joseph Smith in Rochester New
3:44York and Smith had a vision that he was
3:48visited by an angel who presented him
3:51with gold plates and on these gold
3:53plates was a new scripture called the
3:56Book of Mormon and Smith's followers
3:58really continued to be devoted to the
4:00religion even though they faced a lot of
4:02persecution particularly over their
4:04early practice of polygamy until they
4:07continued to move west under the
4:09leadership of a second man Brigham Young
4:12who took over after Smith was murdered
4:15by an angry crowd in Illinois who then
4:19led the Mormons to Utah where they
4:23continued to be a major religious group
4:24to this day
4:25oh and one other interesting thing about
4:27this is the Oneida community although it
4:29itself did not survive one of the ways
4:32that they made money as a community was
4:34by making silverware and so Oneida
4:37silverware is actually the descendant
4:40company of this really interesting
4:42communal experiment and they lasted I
4:45believe until 2006 so if you ever had
4:48Oneida silverware you were looking at an
4:50artifact of a 19th century religious
4:53movement so the last and probably the
4:55most important part of the Second Great
4:57Awakening that I want to talk about is
4:59its influence on reform movements so let
5:03me give myself a little bit more space
5:04to right here there are several 19th
5:05century reform movements that are tied
5:08into the Second Great Awakening one of
5:10these would be the temperance movement
5:13which hopes to reduce and/or eliminate
5:18people's consumption of alcohol and you
5:24can kind of tie this back to the idea of
5:26heaven on earth right how can you have a
5:29stable family home how can you have a
5:34godly society if everybody who's drunk
5:37all the time I would say the most
5:38important reform movement associated
5:42with the Second Great Awakening was the
5:44abolitionist movement and remember that
5:47Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle
5:49Tom's Cabin which was the greatest
5:52abolition or anti-slavery advertisements
5:55in the world was the daughter of Lyman
5:58Beecher one of the greatest preachers of
6:00the Second Great Awakening and so as
6:02people came to believe that everyone's
6:05life was equally valuable they became
6:09more and more involved in the idea that
6:12slavery should not exist that people who
6:16were enslaved had souls that were just
6:19as worthy of salvation as anyone who was
6:23already free and so they also saw this
6:27as you know one of the perversions of
6:29God's Word and a perversion of the
6:32family which they saw as the central
6:35unit of American democracy and
6:38look anism so slavery should not exist
6:42and people who were really motivated by
6:46their faith in God and their faith and
6:48trying to create heaven on earth in a
6:51better society campaigned really
6:53strenuously for the end of slavery and
6:56ultimately were successful so this is a
6:59really complex topic the Second Great
7:02Awakening you know if we look back at
7:04our web again we can see that this wave
7:08of religious revival was connected in
7:11all sorts of interesting ways to the
7:14economic and political changes of the
7:18time period and in its way led to all
7:20sorts of different social changes so I
7:23think it's a good example of how it's
7:26sometimes really hard to separate things
7:29that happened in the past into really
7:31neat boxes right that oh there was
7:34politics there was religion there was
7:37culture there were economics but in many
7:39ways they're all bound together in a
7:42larger culture within which everyday
7:44individuals navigated their lives and
7:47it's also good to show us that sometimes
7:50we don't exactly know why things
7:52happened in the past we know that people
7:55got really interested in religion in
7:57this time period but historians have
8:00differing ideas about why that might
8:02have been some say that it was a form of
8:05trying to control people as it was more
8:07and more important to have a dutiful
8:10workforce for a factory based industrial
8:13society and some people say that maybe
8:15it was just about demographic and
8:17political shifts and who had power who
8:21had money and who got to vote but we do
8:23know that the Second Great Awakening and
8:25these ideas of trying to improve America
8:28to improve the world and to create
8:31heaven on earth led to all sorts of
8:33interesting things that are still with
8:35us today including religious movements
8:38and the end of slavery