GHIST 225: US HistoryKevin R. Hardwick

Spring 2012 

Lecture 17The Second Great Awakening and

Democratic Reform

1. Revivals2. Perfectibility of Human Nature3. Reform

Methodist Minister Peter Cartwright Preaching at the Cane Ridge Camp Meeting Revival, Kentucky, 1801

Elkridge Tent Revival, Elkridge, West Virginia, 1935

Charles Grandison Finney, 1835

“In the Bible, the word of God is compared to grain, and preaching is compared to sowing seed, and the results to the springing up and growth of the crop.”

Thomas Jefferson to William Munford, 1799: I am among those who think well of the human character generally. I consider man as formed for society. I believe also . . . that his mind is perfectible to a degree of we cannot as yet form any conception. . . . I join you therefore in branding cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances. This is precisely the doctrine which the present despots of the earth are inculcating . . .

Charles Jared Ingersoll, Inchiquin’s Letters, 1810: The civil institutions of this country conduce equally with religious toleration to habits of intelligence and independence.. . . Were it not for the slaves of the South, there would be but one rank. By the facility of subsistence and high price of labor, by the universal education and universal suffrage, almost every man is a yeoman or citizen, sensible of his own individual importance. From ignorance and bigotry, the common features of common people, the Americans have less to fear than from the opposite evils of faction and fanaticism.

Charles Jared Ingersoll, Inchiquin’s Letters, 1810: A republican federation, a free press, general education, abundant subsistence, high price of labor, a warm climate, habits of intemperance, a variety of religious creeds, and the universal sensation of improvement and increase, naturally concur to the constitution of a well informed, ardent, enthusiastic, enterprising and licentious people. Where every man is a citizen, every citizen a free holder, able and allowed to think, speak, and act for himself, the empire of opinion must be omnipotent, and it is impossible that a free and thinking people can be without character. Enterprise, public spirit, intelligence, faction, and love of country are natural to such a people.

Charles Jared Ingersoll, Inchiquin’s Letters, 1810: A republican federation, a free press, general education, abundant subsistence, high price of labor, a warm climate, habits of intemperance, a variety of religious creeds, and the universal sensation of improvement and increase, naturally concur to the constitution of a well informed, ardent, enthusiastic, enterprising and licentious people. Where every man is a citizen, every citizen a free holder, able and allowed to think, speak, and act for himself, the empire of opinion must be omnipotent, and it is impossible that a free and thinking people can be without character. Enterprise, public spirit, intelligence, faction, and love of country are natural to such a people.