America’s History: Printed Page 374
America’s History: Value Edition: Printed Page 331
REVIEW QUESTIONS | Answer these questions to demonstrate your understanding of the chapter’s main ideas. |
Analyze the relationship between religion and reform in the decades from 1800 to 1860. Why did many religious people feel compelled to remake society? How successful were they? Do you see any parallels with social movements today?
The word reform has a positive connotation, as an effort to make things better. Yet many mid-nineteenth-century Americans viewed some “reforms,” such as abolitionism and women’s rights, as destructive to the social order, and other “reforms,” such as Sabbatarianism and temperance, as threats to individual freedom. What was the apparent conflict among reform, social order, and liberty?
THEMATIC UNDERSTANDING Review the events listed under “Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture” on the thematic timeline, paying particular attention to the entries related to individualism and rights on the one hand and to various communal and religious movements on the other. What was the relationship between these somewhat contradictory cultural impulses? How were these two movements related to the social and economic changes in America in the decades after 1800?