Chapter 12

The Second Great Awakening

was the start of the evangelistic spirit among people. The sermons were strong and emotional, and salvation from sin was a broader concept. People were still scared of original sin, and of Hell, but there were ways (they believed) to rid themselves of damnation. Those saved felt especially inclined to demonstrate their faith in their daily behavior. In other words, they tried to be "good!" It was most popular in the West, but grew even more during the market revolution.

Wage Slaves versus Southern Slaves

A Southern Slave was considered property. He could not quit or leave. He was only given food so that he would be able to do his work the next day. A northern wage worker was free to come and go as he pleased. He could quit his job whenever he chose. If he quit a job or was fired, though, he would have to find another job or he would have no money with which to buy food to eat and pay for shelter.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A famous writer and lecturer. He was originally a Unitarian minister who abandoned his occupation and popularized transcendentalism. He believed in a spiritual element that encompassed the ordinary world. He taught that the best way to understand the spiritual side of life and to gain insight into the Universal Being (God) was to observe nature. He gave a series of lectures on culture as part of the lyceum circuit (a speaking tour of intellectuals). He is very well known for Nature, which began the transcendentalist movement, and for The American Scholar, which has been called the "Intellectual Declaration of Independence.

Henry David Thoreau

A friend of Emerson who emphasized individualism. He spent two years of solitude in a cabin at Walden Pond, near Concord, MA. In 1840, based on his experience at Walden Pond, he wrote Walden. He criticized materialism, believing that men needed to live simple lifestyles that left time for spiritual thought.

Transcendentalism

A major philosophical movement in America from the 1830s-1850s. It favored the importance of the individual and frowned upon conformity. It emphasized emotion and the power of nature over cold logic and reason. The movement was basically a reaction against the changes brought on by industrialization.

Patriarchy

A society ruled by men, it was characteristic of American society in the antebellum period. At Lowell, for example, the men governed over the women, taking care to look after their moral behavior.

Francis Cabot Lowell

After becoming a successful merchant here in the United States, Lowell went over to Great Britain, he spent two years there studying the working of the textile industries, and the power looms used in the factories. He came back from Great Britain with all kinds of knowledge; he then formed the Boston Manufacturing Company, which had a more improved power loom technology compared to what was in their textile mill in Waltham, Massachusetts. The waterways were a perfect source of power for the loom for the Boston Manufacturing Company. He was the first to employ women into his mills. They were paid low wages, but they were allowed educational and religious freedom, which wasn't offered any where else at the time. These women were known as the Lowell Mill Girls.

Putting-Out System

Also known as the Workshop System. This was a system where goods were made in the private homes of subcontractors, under the eye of a merchant who "put out" the materials needed. The merchant also gave a certain sum for the finished piece, and then they would sell the completed item to a distant market. So, basically, a merchant would come to your house with raw materials, you and your family made them into finished products, then the merchant would come back to collect the goods and pay you.

American System of Manufactures

Americans were described as "mechanics by nature." People everywhere were inventing tools and machines, even in small towns. The biggest aspect of the American system of manufactures was the development of standardized, interchangeable parts. A faulty gun could be easily disassembled and the broken part could be replaced with the interchangeable part. Before this development, if one little piece of the gun broke, then the entire gun would have to be replaced.

Margaret Fuller

Another transcendentalist thinker. She advocated women's rights and thought that women were entitled to an education and the right to hold jobs. She also advocated emancipation for slaves and prison reform. She expressed her opinions in her book, Women in the 19th Century.

New England Female Labor Reform Association

Formed in 1845, they were a union of women that looked to protect the women in the workforce. They demanded a 10-hour workday at the Lowell Mill but it was denied. After other states agreed to shorten the work day to 10 hours, it finally agreed. This was the first time women gathered together and fought for their rights.

Simeon North

He was an American manufacturer. He previously manufactured scythes before moving to guns. He supplied pistols and rifles to the U.S. government from 1799 and he also developed the use of interchangeable parts in manufacturing and the first-known milling machine.

John Jacob Astor

He was the first multi-millionaire in US history, made through the fur trade, real estate, and opium. His fortune in today's money would be over $110 billion! Anyway, he is significant because he donated a huge portion of his income to the arts, sponsoring Audubon and Edgar Allen Poe, and because his wealth showed how the American economy was industrializing - creating a lot of wealth for a few rich people.

Eli Whitney

Inventor of the cotton gin, Eli Whitney shaped the economy of the South by turning staple cotton into a profitable crop. Whitney then lost all profits due to legal suits over patent infringement, despite the economic and social impact of his invention.

Lowell girls

It is a name given to female textile workers in Francis Cabot Lowell's mill in Lowell, Massachusetts. About 3/4 of all the workers at the mill were women. The mill girls agitated for better working conditions and better wages, since they worked an average of 73 hours per week. They typically worked from 5am to 7pm. The women were kept in boarding houses, and six women shared a single bedroom. They went on strike (refused to work until their demands were met) in 1834 (failed) and in 1836 (they succeeded in preventing the company from raising their rent).

Ten Hour Laws

It was the series of laws throughout New England that shortened the workday of women to 10 hours. This was urged and pushed forward by the New England Female Labor Reform Association.

Industrial motherhood

People believed that women were superior at being gentle, moral, and loving, so childrearing was left to them. The men went to work and the women stayed home.

Birth control and abortion

The birth rate fell dramatically during the 19th century. The average woman had 7 kids in 1800, but only 4 in 1900. The way this was accomplished was through abstinence and abortion. Surgical abortions became very common after 1830 - 1/4 of all pregnancies were aborted between 1840-1860.

Lowell Strike of 1834

The mills started cutting wages of the workers by 25 percent. The workforce was comprised of all women. They then banded together and began a strike to restore their previous wages. It was unsuccessful and many of them were fired and replaced by the Irish who worked for less.

Boston Associates

The term was coined by Vera Shlakmen in Economic History of a Factory Town to described a linked group of investors. The Boston based group included Nathan Appleton, Abbott Lawrence, Amos Lawrence, and Patrick Tracy Jackson. (Don't memorize their names). The group established banks and soon controlled 40% of the banking capital in Boston, another 40% of all insurance capital in Massachusetts, and 30% of Massachusetts' railroads. They owned mills in Mass., New Hampshire, and Southern Maine. The Group provided work for tens of thousands of New Englanders.

Satanic Mills

This was a nickname given to the early mills because of the horrid working conditions found there. Many women and children were employed in these filthy and unsafe mills.

Samuel Slater

Was known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution," since he started the industrial revolution when he brought British textile technology to America. The beginning of the revolution started in a mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island with the construction of the first successful textile mill in America in the 1810s.

Charles G. Finney

preached during the Second Great Awakening. He preached to people of all social classes successfully, and was asked to preach in Rochester, NY. He spoke there daily for six months. His wife, Lydia, made home visits to the unconverted in Rochester. She also rallied the women of Rochester around Evangelist beliefs.

Catharine Beecher (Treatise on Domestic Economy)

Catharine Beecher's book was all about the woman's role in the home. It focused on everything she thought a woman should know about organization, cleaning, cooking, medical advice, even rearing children. It was the ultimate guide to house and home for women of that time. Her book, along with the Bible, was the only one pioneering women took west with them.

Isaac Singer

Singer was a U.S. inventor and manufacturer. He patented a rock-drilling machine in 1839, and a metal-and-wood carving machine in 1849. However, he is most famous for producing an improved version of Elias Howe's sewing machine in 1851. He then founded I.M. Singer & Co. Howe held a successful lawsuit against in 1854, but Singer kept manufacturing.