Transcript The Market Revolution, Moral Reform, and the Making of Northern

The Market Revolution,
Moral Reform, and the
Making of Northern
Culture
History 3.3, 4 Dec. 2001
I. The “Market Revolution”
& Northern Social Change
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Went along with Industrial Revolution, westward expansion,
urbanization, democratization, represented triumph of capitalism over
cultural tradition & rural isolation.
Changes especially strong along new transportation routes like the Erie
Canal, where market forces were felt most strongly & new cities sprung
up overnight. Small-town social controls gone.
Economic & social life became more competitive, entrepreneurial,
individualistic, but also more highly organized & institutionalized.
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
More people became wage laborers & consumers rather than independent
producers, such as farmers or artisans (craftsmen).
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Examples: Decline of “just price.” Rise of private corporations.
Factory work for some, middle-class “white collar” occupations (businessmen,
clerks, professionals) for others.
Ideology that anyone could succeed/rise in a “free labor” society.
Sites of home and work separated. Role of family & home changed from
economic production to emotional nurture and moral teaching. Home life
became “private” life.
“Cult of domesticity”: Middle-class women lost some economic & political
roles but gained new prestige as chief nurturers & teachers in new private
households. Restrained male immorality.
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II. Religious Revival & Moral Reform
Problem was that new capitalist society
(along with numerous aspects of old one)
did follow new middle-class morality.
• Examples: national drinking binge,
toleration of prostitution, disrespect for
religion/Sabbath.
• Particular concern in “Greater New
England,” where churches had just lost tax
support & Unitarianism was rising.

Solution were emotional religious revivals
that tried to restore & update Puritan faith
& morality.
• Most successful revivalist was Charles G.
Finney of NY, beg. 1825.
• Dropped harsher aspects of Calvinism like
original sin & predestination, made
conversion much easier, a simple decision to
reject sin. Idea of “moral free agency.”
• Used capitalist methods, money (Tappans):
aggressive marketing, hard-sell tactics.
• Very popular with middle-class women.
• Swept through North, especially areas settled
by New Englanders.
Charles Grandison Finney
Arthur Tappan
II. Religious Revival
& Moral Reform (cont.)

Rise of “Benevolent Empire”: New evangelical religion
inspired wave of well-funded movements to reform
society acc. to Christian values & middle-class morality.
• Doctrines of “free moral agency,” perfectionism, held out
possibility of perfectly moral society, if only people would decide
not to sin. Some felt (following old Yankee traditions) that it
might be government’s duty to prevent sin altogether.
• Examples: Sabbatarianism, Sunday Schools, temperance,
elimination/criminalization of prostitution, missionary work
(among foreigners, Indians, frontier, urban poor), Antimasonry,
insane asylums, “penitentiaries,” and the new immediate
abolitionism.
• Methods: national organizations w/local chapters, networks of
newspapers, direct mail, touring speakers, popular culture
(prints & songs).
• Hostile to immigrants, Catholicism, Democrats, sinning workers.
• Women involved in these movements (& snubbed by men in
them) become the first feminists: Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
III. Conclusion:
The Making of Northern Society

Taken together, Market Rev., revivals, &
reforms helped establish key aspects of
northern society.
• Personality: plain-living, self-controlling, futureoriented, self-reliant, hard-working, inner-directed
(motivated by shame, not honor), law-bound
(seeking impersonal & peaceful means for solving
conflicts).
• Moral & economic order preferred by middle-class
Christians increasingly enforced by government.
Rise of police forces.
Abolitionist Popular Culture
The Hutchinson Family singers:
Greatest Abolitionist Hits