Waubonsee Community College

Moralists and modernizers, America's pre-Civil War reformers, Steven Mintz

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 157-171) and index

contains biographical information

index present

non fiction

Moralists and modernizers

bibliography

31708203

Steven Mintz

The American moment

America's pre-Civil War reformers

"The decades before the Civil War saw the first secular efforts in history to remake society through reform. Reformers launched unprecedented campaigns to reform criminals and prostitutes, educate the deaf and the blind, guarantee women's rights, and abolish slavery. Our modern systems of free public schools, prisons, and hospitals for the mentally ill are all legacies of this era. Moralists and Modernizers tells the fascinating story of America's first age of reform, combining incisive portraits of leading reformers and movements with perceptive analyses of religion, politics, and society. Arguing that the reform impulse grew out of the era's peculiar mix of fear and hope, Steven Mintz shows that reform arose not only from fears of social disorder, family fragmentation, and widening class divisions but also from a millennialist sense of possibility rooted in new religious and philosophical ideas. He then examines three distinct responses to pre-Civil War America's pressing social problems. Moral reform sought to create a Christian moral order using moral suasion. Social reform combatted poverty, crime, and ignorance through new institutions offering nonauthoritarian forms of social control. Radical reform sought to regenerate American society by eliminating fundamental sources of inequality such as slavery and racial and sexual discrimination. In an epilogue, Mintz fits antebellum reform into the larger context of America's liberal tradition. Mintz concludes that America's pre-Civil War reformers were at once moral critics and cultural modernizers. As exponents of a distinctly modern set of values, reformers attacked outmoded customs, smoothed the transition from a preindustrial to an industrial order, and devised modern bureaucratic systems of criminal justice, public education, and social welfare. The first comprehensive account of antebellum reform to appear in twenty years, Moralists and Modernizers is a rich and rewarding work of synthesis and interpretation which draws upon the most recent historical research."--Cover

Ch. 1. The Specter of Social Breakdown -- Ch. 2. The Promise of the Millennium -- Ch. 3. Making the United States a Christian Republic: The Politics of Virtue -- Ch. 4. The Science of Doing Good: Creating Crucibles of Moral Character -- Ch. 5. Breaking the Bonds of Corrupt Custom -- Epilogue: Antebellum Reform and the American Liberal Tradition

Moralists & modernizers