11 Religion and Reform

1800–1860

“The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds,” noted Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s, “that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.” The antebellum religious revivals stressed a person’s freedom to choose God’s gift of salvation. Life everlasting became a matter of choice and not, as the Calvinists had proclaimed, the prerogative of God alone. Religious enthusiasm also inspired new religious sects, denominations, and utopian communities, like Joseph Smith’s Mormonism. The spiritual excitement of the era combined with Jefferson’s “inalienable right” to pursue one’s happiness to produce a powerful devotion to individualism that had widespread repercussions.

This theme of individualism also influenced culture, politics, and reform. The transcendentalists used this ideal in creative ways, inspiring utopian communities and the campaign for women’s rights. The political dimension of individualism, as glimpsed in the Jacksonian era, also liberated urban culture from the constraints of upper-class “respectability.” Some, particularly advocates of women’s and African American rights, used the language of individualism to strike blows against gender and racial discrimination and slavery. Others quickly saw the limits, even dangers, of excessive individualism: political turmoil, sectionalism, and social discord.