Chapter 7 Section 1

Cultural, Social, and Religious Life

•What makes a society unique?

• Scholarship• Art• Education

Benjamin Rush-Scholar

• Doctor• Scientist • Revolutionary• Represented PA in

Continental Congress

Charles Wilson Peale

• Artist

Phillis Wheatley

• Young enslaved woman from Senegal

• Became a poet

Education

• American Spelling Book- By Noah Webster, it called for establishing standards of a national language

• American Dictionary for the English Language-alsi by Webster

What were Republican Virtues?

• Self-Reliance• Thrift• Hard work• Sacrificing individual

needs for the good of the community?

Why were these Republican Virtues considered to be important?

• American would need these attributed in order to build the new Republic successfully

• “Republican Women” had the responsibility of passing these virtues on from generation to generation

What factors drove population growth in the early 1800s?

• 1780- 2.7 million people in U.S.

• 1830- 12 million people in U.S.

• Population doubling every 20 years

• Immigration only play a small part in the early 1800s

• The most important factor was a great increase in the number of births

Mobile Society

• More people meant more crowding-especially along Atlantic Coast

• Americans responded by moving away

• Americans made the U.S. a mobile society-one in which people continually move from place to place

Mobile Society• Mobile in movement,

and also position in society

• 2 effects of Social Mobility– 1. American had great

opportunities to improve their lives

– 2. People had to learn new skills and rules for getting along with a wide range of people and surviving in a new area

Second Great Awakening• A Christian movement

that was evangelical in nature.

• Meaning:• 1. Recognized the

Christian Bible as the final authority

• 2. Believed salvation could be achieved though a personal belief in Jesus

• People had to demonstrate their faith by leading a transformed life

Congregation

• Members of the church• The SGA was very

democratic. Anyone was welcome to join a congregation, whether they were rich or poor.

• The importance of the congregation was stressed, rather than the minister.

Revival

• Common feature of SGA• Gathering where people

were “revived” or brought back to a religious life– Listening to preachers– Accepting Jesus

Denomination

• A religious sub-group

• Religious subgroups• Experienced rapid

growth during SGA

• Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians, Mormons, etc…

How did the Second Great Awakening lead to the growth of new Christian denominations?

• Baptist churches grew because they reflected the evangelical zeal of the SGA.

• Methodism was well suited to frontier life and appealed to the common people

• Unitarianism offered hope and appealed to reason

• Mormanism also gained popularity

Significance of the Second Great Awakening

• Experienced by the whole country making it a collective cultural experience

• Made it easier for regular people to hear Christianity, the prominent religion in the U.S. at the time.