Chapter 9: Economic Chapter 9: Economic TransformationTransformation

By Neil HammondMillbrook High School

Economic ChangeEconomic Change• The economic transformation had two

facets: – the increase in production known as the

Industrial Revolution– the expansion of commerce known as the

Market Revolution.

• Water and steam were crucial ingredients in both revolutions—driving factory machinery, carrying goods to market in canals and rivers, and propelling steamboats and railroad engines.

Results of Economic ChangeResults of Economic Change• Part of this is your essay…

• Benevolent Empire

Benevolent EmpireBenevolent Empire• A broad-ranging campaign of moral and

institutional reforms inspired by Evangelical Christian ideals and endorsed by upper-middle-class men and women in the 1820s.

• Goal = “to restore the moral government of God” (Lyman Beecher)– By moral persuasion– Or by law

Benevolent EmpireBenevolent Empire• The Benevolent Empire targeted old

evils: drunkenness, adultery, prostitution and crime

• But NEW methods of combating them by establishing various societies (e.g. Prison Discipline Society, American Society for Promotion of temperance)– Institutionalize charity– Combat evil

Characteristics of the Characteristics of the Benevolent EmpireBenevolent Empire

• First, they campaigned for temperance and “regular habits”

• Second, the Second, they devised new institutions to help those in need and to control those they considered threats to society. – Reformers provided homes of refuge for abandoned

children and asylums for insane individuals, who previously had been confined by their families in attics and cellars. They campaigned to end corporal punishment and to rehabilitate criminals in new penitentiaries designed to modify criminal behavior.

• Women played a huge role in these societies

The Limited Appeal of the The Limited Appeal of the Benevolent EmpireBenevolent Empire

• 1828 L. Beecher and other ministers campaigned for Americans to observe the sabbath… General Union for Promoting the Observance of the Christian Sabbath. General Union chapters—replete with women's auxiliaries—sprang up from Maine to the Ohio River Valley– But working class men who worked six days a

week refused to spend the seventh praying– Erie Canal shipping companies demanded that

lock keepers worked on Sundays

• Stuff like this LIMITED the appeal of the Benevolent Empire

Charles FinneyCharles Finney• This evangelical

minister had success with revivals along the Erie Canal. He appealed to all classes (although he emphasized middle class values) with his message that anybody could change and choose salvation• In Rochester, wealthy merchants and manufacturers agreed to give up alcohol, attend church and encourage their employees to do the same.

Resistance to Finney’s IdeasResistance to Finney’s Ideas

• Finney's efforts to create a harmonious community of morally disciplined Christians were not completely successful.

– Skilled workers who belonged to strong craft organizations—boot makers, carpenters, stonemasons, and boatbuilders—argued that they needed higher wages and schools more urgently than sermons and prayers.

– Poor people often ignored Finney's revival, as did the Irish Catholic immigrants who had recently begun arriving in Rochester and other northeastern cities, bringing with them a hatred of Protestants as both religious heretics and political oppressors.

The 2The 2ndnd Great Awakening Great Awakening ExpandsExpands

• Ignoring this resistance, revivalists from New England to the Midwest copied Finney's evangelical message and techniques. In New York City, wealthy silk merchants Arthur and Lewis Tappan founded a magazine, The Christian Evangelist, which promoted Finney's ideas. The revivals swept through Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana, where, a convert reported, “you could not go upon the street and hear any conversation, except upon religion.” The success of the revivals “has been so general and thorough,” concluded a Presbyterian general assembly, “that the whole customs of society have changed.”

The Temperance SocietyThe Temperance Society• 1832 the Temperance Movement was taken over by

Evangelicals

• Self-discipline only part of it…people had to experience a religious conversion. This evangelical message fostered individual enterprise and moral discipline not only among middle-class Americans but also among many wage earners. Thus, religion and the ideology of social mobility served as powerful cement that held society together in the face of the divisions created by industrialization, the market economy, and increasing cultural diversity.– Throughout America, the consumption of spirits fell

dramatically, from an average of five gallons per person in 1830 to two gallons in 1845.

ImmigrationImmigration• Vast wave of immigrants from

1840 to 1860– 2m Irish; 1.5 Germans; 750,000 Brits– Different prosperity levels,

destinations

• Poorest were the Irish– They headed to the cities of NE and NY– men took low-paying jobs as factory

hands, construction workers, and canal diggers, while the women took positions as domestic servants in middle- and upper-class homes. Irish families crowded into cheap tenement buildings with primitive sanitation systems and were the first to die when disease struck.

The Growth of the Catholic The Growth of the Catholic ChurchChurch• In times of hardship and sorrow, immigrants

turned to their churches. Many Germans and virtually all the Irish were Catholics, and they fueled the growth of the Catholic Church. In 1840, there were sixteen Catholic dioceses and seven hundred churches in the United States; by 1860, there were forty-five dioceses and twenty-five hundred churches. Under the guidance of their priests and bishops, Catholics built an impressive network of institutions—charitable societies, orphanages, militia companies, parochial schools, and political organizations—that helped them maintain both their religion and their German or Irish identity.

NativismNativism• The 2nd Great Awakening’s impact meant that

Catholic immigrants faced opposition/resentment

• In 1834, Morse published Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, which warned of a Catholic threat to American republican institutions. Morse believed that Catholic immigrants would obey the dictates of Pope Gregory XVI, who in an encyclical in 1832 had condemned liberty of conscience, freedom of publication, and the separation of church and state, and had urged Catholics to repudiate republicanism and acknowledge the “submission due to princes.” Republican-minded Protestants of many denominations shared Morse's fears, and Foreign Conspiracy became their textbook.

Immigration Leads to Social Immigration Leads to Social TensionsTensions

• Bad economic times saw violence against Catholics? Why?– Religious divisions hurt the nascent labor union

movement

• Other Protestants organized nativist clubs, which called for limits on immigration, the restriction of public office to native-born citizens, and the exclusive use of the Protestant version of the Bible in public schools. Benevolent-minded Protestant reformers supported the anti-Catholic movement for reasons of public policy. As crusaders for public education, they opposed the diversion of tax resources to Catholic schools; as advocates of a civilized society, they condemned the rowdyism of drunken Irish men.

Immigration Leads to Social Immigration Leads to Social TensionsTensions

• In many northeastern cities, religious and cultural conflicts led to violence. – 1834 Charlestown, Massachusetts…a convent burned

down– 1844 Philadelphia, violence erupted in 1844, when

the Catholic bishop persuaded public-school officials to use both Catholic and Protestant versions of the Bible.

– Anti-Irish rioting incited by the city's nativist clubs lasted for two months and escalated into open warfare between Protestants and the Pennsylvania militia.

• Even as economic revolution brought prosperity to many Americans and attracted millions of immigrants, it divided the society along the lines of class, ethnicity, and religion.