The Great Awakening

The Second Great Awakening was a powerful religious revival lead by the preacher Charles G. Finney that swept the nation during the mid 1800s. While it was potent in every region of the country, it had a particular effect on two social areas of the North: abolitionism and temperance. Both rose from the ideas of the Second Great Awakening, which held that the individual was responsible for their own salvation through moral righteousness and rejected the idea of predestination. The revival was based on the idea of showing faith to God by doing good things within society and acting with moral correctness. The Second Great Awakening influenced the entire country, but it influenced the northern part of America more so than it did the south. As a whole this religious revival encouraged democratic ideas and bettered the standard of the common man.

Abolitionism was an issue that the north and south were debating years before the Second Great Awakening took place in America. The Second Great Awakening inspired northerners to take a stand on slavery and confront the south on this serious issue. In the past northerners did not care that the south was involved with slavery because slavery was not in their region of the country. This religious revival inspired the north to take a stand on slavery even though slavery was not allowed in the north.

Northerners also refused to fight in a war against Spain for land west of the south because it would expand the area where slavery was allowed. The reasoning that the northerners had behind this was that they could not allow slavery to take part in a country that they were a part of. This is a prime example of how the Second Great Awakening inspired democratic ideas and bettered the standard of the common man. The movement for abolitionism in the north was closely followed by the temperance movement in the north.

The temperance movement was a movement largely inspired by women and their hate towards the effects of alcohol. The goal of the movement was to prohibit drinking and to almost ban it entirely from the country. Women throughout the country band together to fight against alcohol because many of them were left without husbands because of alcohol. It was common to see husbands turn into alcoholics in the north and abandon their wife and children. As a result, the American Temperance Union was formed to fight against drunkenness.

Temperance was wanted more in the north than in the south because of the difference in the economy and family structure of the two regions. The southern economy was based on agriculture and required slaves to work on the farms for husbands to make money for their families. The northern economy was a merchant and craft based economy in which the husband was solely responsible for going out into the market and earning money. In the north the husband was entirely responsible to go out and earn money everyday while in the south a man could go out and be drunk for a day while his slaves worked on the farm. It is true that a southern farmer would still have to watch his slaves everyday, but a day of being drunk was not as damaging as it would be to a northern merchant or craftsmen. The Second Great Awakening inspired a movement for temperance, but more so in the north than in the south.

The Second Great Awakening resulted in the bettering of living conditions for all men including slaves and encouraged democratic ideals such as abolishing slavery. Charles G. Finney inspired millions of Americans to improve the standards that existed within American society and helped to begin to bring an end to a dark time in American history. The Second Great Awakening was extremely beneficial for America because it brought about social equality and worked against excessive drinking. Overall, the Second Great Awakening influenced Abolitionism by creating an immediate demand from the North to abolish slavery, and it influenced temperance by creating a need to stop excessive drinking.