Theme: The Second Great Awakening, secular rationalism, Women's rights, and culture reformation!
The spectacular religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening reversed a trend toward secular rationalism in American culture, and helped to fuel a spirit of social reform. In the process, religion was increasingly feminized, while women in turn took the lead in movements of reform, including those designed to improve their own condition.

Theme: "Utopia and Ideals"
The attempt to improve Americans faith, morals, and character affected nearly all areas of American life and culture, including education, the family, literature, and the artsculminating in the great crusade against slavery.

Theme: Literary and Expression of Fine Arts after the War!
Intellectual and cultural development in America was less prolific than in Europe, but they did earn some international recognition and became more distinctly American, especially after the War of 1812.

1.  Religious and moral movements, democratization of politics, and the creation of the national market economy sparked for great change and makeover for early nineteenth century America.

2.  Due to a new wave of revivals beginning about 1800 (which swept out of the West and effected great change not only in religious life but also in other areas of society) existing religious groups were further fragmented, and new groups like the Mormons emerged. Women were especially prominent in these developments, becoming a major presence in the churches and discovering in reform movements an outlet for energies that were often stifled in masculinized political and economic life.

3.  Education benefited from the reform.  The public elementary school movement gained strength, while a few women made their way into still tradition-bound colleges.

4.  Women were also prominent in movements for improved treatment of the mentally ill, peace, temperance, and other causes, and by the 1840s some women also began to agitate for their own rights, including suffrage. Women wanted the right to vote and spoke out for the first significant time!  The movement for womens rights, closely linked to the antislavery crusade, meant both obstacles and opposition for a determined group of women. 

5.  Utopian experiments were created to model religious and social ideals as the nation focused on improvement as a whole. Some of these groups promoted radical sexual and economic doctrines, while others appealed to high-minded intellectuals and artists.

6.  The Arts!  American culture was still quite weak in theoretical sciences and the fine arts, but a vigorous national literature blossomed after the War of 1812.  (French and Indian War)

7.  In New England the literary renaissance was closely linked to the philosophy of transcendentalism promoted by Emerson and others. 

8.  Many of the great American writers like Walt Whitman reflected the national spirit of utopian optimism, but a few dissenters like Hawthorne and Melville explored the darker side of life and of their own society, however each literary geniuses in expressing the life of the reform culture in the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries. 

9.  It was after the War of 1812 that culture boomed in the US, and through the arts, this ideal world was shown as well as the pain and suffering of the era. 

10.  The role of Women during this time was crucial because they were speaking out as compident individuals and women's rights began a movement with suffrage and education that has shaped our world to eventually what it is today.  Although there is always room for improvement when it comes to discrimination and equal rights, it was at this time of culture and reform that women first significantly took a stand for their beliefs and their determination ultimately, and through struggle, did not go unnoticed.


(themes summarized and explained, as well as 10 facts and brief elaborations)
-kels