AP US History 3.10-3.11: American Identity and Migration

Second Great Awakening

A widespread religious revival in the United States from roughly the 1790s through the 1840s. It emphasized emotional conversion, expanded church membership, encouraged new denominations, and helped inspire antebellum reform movements.

How did the Second Great Awakening differ from the religious and intellectual trends it reacted against?

It rejected skepticism, deism, Unitarianism, and rationalism associated with the American Enlightenment. Revivalists instead emphasized evangelical faith, emotional religious experience, personal conversion, and active moral reform.

Where did the Second Great Awakening begin, and among which denominations did it initially spread?

Major revivals began in Kentucky and Tennessee during the 1790s and early 1800s. Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists were especially important in launching and spreading the movement.

Postmillennialism

The belief that Christ would return after a millennium, understood either as a literal thousand years or a long era of peace. It encouraged Christians to improve and purify society in preparation for Christ's return.

How did postmillennial theology connect the Second Great Awakening to social reform?

If society had to be morally prepared for Christ's return, Christians had a religious duty to combat social evils. This reasoning encouraged reform efforts involving temperance, abolition, education, prisons, and care for the disadvantaged.

How did postmillennial expectations change from the 1830s to the late 1840s?

Some believers in the 1830s expected the millennium to arrive soon. By the late 1840s, failed expectations pushed the millennium into the distant future, making postmillennialism a less urgent but still influential rationale for gradual reform.

Revival meeting

An emotionally intense religious gathering designed to produce conversions and renew religious commitment. Revival meetings attracted large crowds and helped evangelical denominations cross geographic and social boundaries.

Camp meeting

A multiday outdoor religious gathering, especially important on the frontier where formal churches were scarce. Camp meetings combined preaching and worship with social fellowship and often featured singing, shouting, dancing, and other emotional expressions.

How did camp meetings promote the spread of organized religion on the frontier?

They brought isolated settlers into contact with preachers and neighboring communities, sometimes providing their first encounter with organized Christianity. Converts often returned home to establish or join small local congregations.

Revival of 1800

A major revival centered in Kentucky, especially at Red River, Gasper River, Muddy River, and Cane Ridge. It helped establish the camp meeting as a powerful revival technique and accelerated the growth of Methodists, Baptists, and new religious movements.

Why was the Cane Ridge revival significant?

The 1801 gathering in Kentucky drew perhaps tens of thousands of people and included Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist preachers. Its size and emotional intensity made it a model for later frontier revivals.

What theological shift distinguished many revivalists from traditional Calvinists?

Revivalists stressed an individual's ability and responsibility to respond to Christ and seek salvation. Traditional Calvinism emphasized predestination and salvation through God's electing grace rather than human choice.

How did revival practices contribute to tensions between Presbyterians and other revivalist denominations?

Presbyterians initially participated in camp meetings but increasingly objected to their noise, emotional displays, and prolonged services. They consequently became less involved, while Methodists and Baptists continued to use the meetings extensively.

Circuit riders

Itinerant Methodist ministers who traveled established routes to preach in remote frontier settlements. Their mobility and connection to ordinary settlers allowed Methodism to expand rapidly in sparsely populated areas.

Why were Methodists and Baptists particularly successful during the Second Great Awakening?

Methodists used an efficient itinerant ministry, while Baptists relied on accessible preaching and local congregational organization. Both recruited broadly across social classes and appealed effectively to frontier populations.

Burned-over District

A name later applied to western New York, where repeated revivals and experimentation with new religious movements were especially prominent during the nineteenth century. The label suggested that the region had been exhausted by intense revival activity.

Why do historians debate whether the Burned-over District was exceptionally religious?

Some statistical studies found its religiosity broadly typical of surrounding regions, while other historians argue that its revivals had an unusually lasting influence on American religion and reform.

Cumberland Presbyterian Church

A denomination founded in Tennessee in 1810 after the Revival of 1800. It supported revivalism and expanded Presbyterian influence in sparsely settled regions.

What did the Second Great Awakening's emphasis on spiritual equality imply for church membership?

Because all people were viewed as capable of responding to God, revivalist denominations recruited people from many social classes and racial groups. This helped Methodists and Baptists grow relative to older colonial denominations such as Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians.

How did the Second Great Awakening alter the balance among American Protestant denominations?

Methodist and Baptist membership grew rapidly, especially in frontier and rural areas, while older colonial denominations lost relative numerical dominance. The revival also produced numerous new denominations and non-denominational movements.

Which new religious movements emerged from the religious ferment of the Second Great Awakening?

Important examples include the Latter-day Saint movement, the Restoration Movement, Adventism, the Holiness movement, and the Shakers.

Advent movement

A revival movement of the 1830s and 1840s centered on belief in the imminent Second Coming, or Second Advent, of Jesus. William Miller was a leading preacher, and the movement influenced later groups including Seventh-day Adventists and Advent Christians.

Holiness movement

A movement that reemphasized Wesleyan teachings about sanctification, or spiritual holiness. It eventually developed into churches and organizations distinct from mainline Methodism.

Restoration Movement

A movement seeking to recover what its participants viewed as the original, simple Christianity of the New Testament. It opposed elaborate hierarchy and contributed to the development of the Churches of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), among others.

Why did restorationist ideas appeal to many Americans during the early nineteenth century?

The United States was imagined as a new and relatively uncorrupted setting in which pure Christianity could be recovered. A Bible-centered faith also offered a way to avoid competing denominational authorities and established European church traditions.

How did the Second Great Awakening contribute to religious and educational infrastructure in the United States?

Congregations and voluntary organizations created missionary societies, Bible societies, religious newspapers, colleges, seminaries, and educational networks. These institutions helped evangelize the frontier and spread northeastern Protestant culture.

Benevolent Empire

A network of voluntary Protestant organizations devoted to evangelism, education, moral improvement, and social reform in the early nineteenth century. It provided institutional support for the revival's emphasis on turning personal faith into public action.

What did evangelical converts believe was required for salvation beyond personal repentance?

They were expected to pursue the moral improvement of society by opposing sin in its social forms. This belief encouraged participation in reform movements and institution building.

What was the relationship between revivalist religion and the idea of societal perfectibility?

Many revivalists believed individuals and society could be morally improved. They therefore supported both personal conversion and collective efforts to change laws, institutions, and social practices.

Which antebellum reform movements were strengthened by the Second Great Awakening?

Religious activism contributed to temperance, abolitionism, prison reform, improved care for disabled and mentally ill people, education, and campaigns for women's rights and moral reform.

What role did religion play in the development of nineteenth-century reform movements?

Reformers often interpreted social improvement as part of God's plan and viewed churches as agents for purifying the world. Religious networks supplied motivation, leadership, funding, communication, and institutions for reform.

How did the Second Great Awakening affect American politics?

It moved religious and moral concerns more directly into political debate and encouraged broader participation in reform-oriented politics. Evangelical reformers influenced the antebellum Whig tradition and the political culture of the Second Party System.

How did the Second Great Awakening affect African American religious life?

Baptist and Methodist revivals converted both enslaved and free African Americans and encouraged the growth of Black preachers and congregations. Discrimination within white-controlled churches led many African Americans to establish independent denominations.

How did revival religion sometimes challenge slavery?

The emphasis on spiritual equality and conversion gave enslaved people religious language and communal networks with which to claim dignity and freedom. Revival meetings also helped inspire resistance, including Gabriel Prosser's planned 1800 rebellion.

What restrictions did white authorities place on independent African American religious congregations?

In some states, laws required a white person to be present at Black worship meetings. These restrictions reflected white fears that independent religious gatherings could foster resistance and collective action.

African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME)

An independent African American denomination founded in Philadelphia in 1816 under the leadership of Richard Allen and others. It provided Black Christians with greater control over worship, leadership, and community institutions.

Richard Allen

A Black Methodist leader who founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. His work reflected African Americans' efforts to create independent religious institutions in response to discrimination.

What demographic groups were especially prominent among Second Great Awakening converts?

Women converted in greater numbers than men, and young people under twenty-five were often among the earliest converts. Revivalism also recruited common farmers, frontier settlers, enslaved people, and free African Americans.

Why did religious participation provide important benefits to many nineteenth-century women?

Churches and religious organizations offered women community, peer support, and meaningful activity beyond the household. They also created socially acceptable avenues for women to influence education, morality, missions, and reform.

Feminization of Christianity

A shift in religious emphasis toward qualities such as Christ's humility, forgiveness, and moral compassion, partly intended to appeal to female congregants. The term describes a change in rhetoric and religious culture rather than women's formal control of churches.

What public religious roles did women assume during the Second Great Awakening?

Women shared conversion testimonies, participated in prayer, assisted other converts, educated children, and organized missionary and reform societies. Although usually excluded from formal ministerial leadership, these activities expanded women's influence outside the home.

How did women's religious organizations contribute to broader social reform?

Women's prayer groups, missionary societies, maternal associations, and moral reform organizations developed organizational and financial skills. In the 1830s, female moral reform societies became one of the first predominantly female social movements in the North.

How did the Second Great Awakening influence the public sphere even though women were generally denied formal church authority?

Women used voluntary religious and reform organizations to act collectively and shape public morality. Their work expanded women's influence beyond the private household and helped connect evangelical religion to campaigns for temperance, abolition, and moral reform.

Why did migration within North America increase during the early nineteenth century?

Population growth, the search for inexpensive farmland and economic opportunity, improved transportation, and federal policies that opened or transferred western lands encouraged settlers to move beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

How did westward migration change the population and settlement of the United States?

Large numbers of migrants moved into the trans-Appalachian West and established farms, towns, and new states. This expansion extended U.S. political and economic institutions while intensifying disputes over land and sovereignty.

How did westward migration affect Native American peoples?

Settler expansion displaced Native communities, reduced their access to hunting grounds and farmland, and produced repeated conflicts over land. Treaties, warfare, and federal removal policies transferred much of the eastern and southeastern United States to white settlers.

Indian Removal Act of 1830

A federal law that authorized the negotiation of treaties to remove Native peoples from lands east of the Mississippi River to territory in the West. In practice, it enabled coercive removal and opened Native lands to white settlement.

Trail of Tears

The forced migration of the Cherokee and other southeastern Native peoples to lands west of the Mississippi during the 1830s. Thousands died from disease, exposure, and inadequate supplies during the removal.

How did Native Americans resist U.S. expansion during the era of westward migration?

Native peoples used diplomacy, legal challenges, military resistance, and intertribal political alliances to defend their lands and sovereignty. Despite these efforts, U.S. military power, treaties, and removal policies enabled continued settler expansion.