Industrial Revolution - Inventions2

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Slide 58

Protestant evangelicalism heightened the cultural conflict between native-born Americans and millions of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany.

Slide 59

Nativist writers attacked Irish Catholics as anti-republican, and American workers blamed immigrant labor for their economic woes—attitudes that led to ethnic riots in many northern cities.

By 1860, the United States was a more prosperous society than ever before, but also one exhibiting numerous social and economic divisions

Slide 60

Presbyterian minister Charles Grandison Finney conducted emotional revivals that stressed conversion rather than instruction; Finney’s ministry drew on and accelerated the Second Great Awakening.

Finney’s message that man was able to choose salvation was particularly attractive to the middle class.

Slide 61

Finney wanted to humble the pride of the rich and relieve the shame of the poor by celebrating their common fellowship in Christ.

The business elite joined the “Cold Water” movement, establishing savings banks and Sunday schools for the poor and helping to provide relief for the unemployed.

The initiatives to create a harmonious community of morally disciplined Christians were not altogether effective; skilled workers argued for higher wages more than sermons and prayers and Finney’s revival seldom attracted poor people, especially Irish Catholics.

Slide 62

Revivalists from New England to the Midwest copied Finney’s evangelical message and techniques and the movement swept through Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Indiana.

The temperance movement proved to be the most effective arena for evangelical social reform; the American Temperance Society adapted methods that worked well in the revivals and helped the consumption of spirits to fall dramatically.

Slide 63

Evangelical reformers celebrated religion as the moral foundation of the American work ethic; religion and the ideology of social mobility served as a cement that held society together in the face of the disarray created by the market economy, industrial enterprise, and cultural diversity.

Slide 64

Immigration and Cultural Conflict

Between 1840 and 1860, millions of immigrants— Irish, Germans, and Britons— poured into the United States.

Most avoided the South, and many Germans moved to states in the Midwest, while other Germans and most of the Irish settled in the Northeast.