Chapter 13: Antebellum Idealism and Reform Impulses, 1820–1860
Key Terms
- abolitionist
- a believer in the complete elimination of slavery
- colonization
- the strategy of moving African Americans out of the United States, usually to Africa
- immediatism
- the moral demand to take immediate action against slavery to bring about its end
- millennialism
- the belief that the Kingdom of God would be established on earth and that God would reign on earth for a thousand years characterized by harmony and Christian morality
- moral suasion
- an abolitionist technique of appealing to the consciences of the public, especially slaveholders
- Mormons
- members of an American denomination of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that emphasized patriarchal leadership
- phrenology
- the mapping of the mind to specific human attributes
- pietistic
- the stressing of stressed transformative individual religious experience or piety over religious rituals and formality
- Second Great Awakening
- a revival of evangelical Protestantism in the early nineteenth century
- Seneca Falls
- the location of the first American conference on women’s rights and the signing of the “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments” in 1848
- Shakers
- a religious sect that emphasized communal living and celibacy
- teetotalism
- complete abstinence from all alcohol
- temperance
- a social movement encouraging moderation or self-restraint in the consumption of alcoholic beverages
- transcendentalism
- the belief that all people can attain an understanding of the world that transcends rational, sensory experience