What Hath God Wrought (129 page)

The Old Northwest commands a growing historical literature; see James Simeone,
Democracy and Slavery in Frontier Illinois
(2000); James Davis,
Frontier Illinois
(1998); Donald Ratcliffe,
Party Spirit in a Frontier Republic
(1998); Nicole Etcheson,
The Emerging Midwest
(1996); Douglas Hurt,
The Ohio Frontier
(1996); Susan Gray,
The Yankee West
(1996); Andrew Cayton,
Frontier Indiana
(1996) and
Frontier Republic: Ohio
(1986); Andrew Cayton and Peter Onuf,
The Midwest and the Nation
(1990); and Malcolm Rohrbough,
The Land Office Business
(1968). However, Frederick Jackson Turner’s
The Rise of the New West
(1906) and Richard Powers’s
Planting Corn Belt Culture
(1953) are still very useful.

Robert Pierce Forbes,
The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath
(2007) is a profound study; I used the 1994 Yale dissertation that preceded it. See also Glover Moore,
The Missouri Controversy
(1953); William Cooper,
Liberty and Slavery
(1983); and Richard H. Brown’s seminal article, “The Missouri Crisis, Slavery, and the Politics of Jacksonianism,”
South Atlantic Quarterly
65 (1966): 55–72.

The social and cultural importance of the Second Great Awakening has prompted a large body of writing. Modern interpretations include Mark Noll,
America’s God
(2002); Edith Blumhover and Randall Balmer, eds.,
Modern Christian Revivals
(1993); Jon Butler,
Awash in a Sea of Faith
(1990); Nathan Hatch,
The Democratization of American Christianity
(1989); Richard Carwardine,
Transatlantic Revivalism
(1978); William McLoughlin,
Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform
(1978); Scott Miyakawa,
Protestants and Pioneers
(1968); and Perry Miller’s unfinished classic,
The Life of the Mind in America
(1965). Much scholarship focuses on upstate New York: Whitney Cross,
The Burned-Over District
(1950); Paul Johnson,
A Shopkeeper’s Millennium
(1978); Mary Ryan,
Cradle of the Middle Class
(1981); Curtis Johnson,
Islands of Holiness
(1989); and David Hackett,
The Rude Hand of Innovation
(1991). For the South, see Christine Heyrman,
Southern Cross
(1997); John Quist,
Restless Visionaries
(1998); Randy Sparks,
On Jordan’s Stormy Banks
(1994); and Donald Mathews,
Religion in the Old South
(1977). General works of much value for this period include Jon Butler et al.,
Religion in American Life
(2003); Richard W. Fox,
Jesus in America
(2004); and Sydney Ahlstrom,
A Religious History of the American People
, 2nd ed. (2004).

To see how religious disestablishment paved the way for the Awakening, consult William McLoughlin,
New England Dissent, 1680–1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State
(1971), 2 vols. The personalities of the evangelists can be viewed in Charles Hambrick-Stowe,
Charles G. Finney
(1996); Joseph Conforti,
Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement
(1981); Charles White,
The Beauty of Holiness: Phoebe Palmer
(1986); and Robert Abzug,
Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination
(1994). The Beecher family has a rich historiography; on their role in the Awakening, see Marie Caskey,
Chariot of Fire
(1977); Vincent Harding,
A Certain Magnificence
(1991); and James Fraser,
Pedagogue for God’s Kingdom
(1985).

Works on particular kinds of Protestantism include David Hempton,
Methodism
(New Haven, 2005); Russell Richey,
Early American Methodism
(1991); John Wigger,
Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and Popular Christianity
(1998); Gregory Willis,
Democratic Religion: Church Discipline in the Baptist South
(1997); Thomas Hamm,
The Transformation of American Quakerism
(1988); Larry Ingle,
Quakers in Conflict
(1986); David Harrell Jr.,
Quest for a Christian America: The Disciples of Christ
(1966); and Richard Hughes and Leonard Allen,
Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America
(1988).

For American Catholics, see Jay Dolan,
Catholic Revivalism
(1978); Ann Taves,
The Household of Faith
(1986); Charles Morris,
American Catholic
(1997); and Jay Dolan,
In Search of an American Catholicism
(2002). For controversies within the Catholic Church, see Patrick Carey,
People, Priests, and Prelates
(1987) and Dale Light,
Rome and the New Republic
(1996). For a view of Catholic relations with the Protestant majority, see Lawrence Moore,
Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans
(1986), 48–79. Catholic attitudes toward slavery are explained (along with much else) in John McGreevy’s excellent
Catholicism and American Freedom
(2003); see also Thomas Bakenkotter,
Concise History of the Catholic Church
, rev. ed. (2004), 294–302.

The active role of women in the Awakening and its philanthropy has rightly received attention from historians. See Marilyn Westerkamp,
Women and Religion in Early America
(1999); Catherine Brekus,
Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740–1845
(1998); Nancy Hardesty,
Your Daughters Shall Prophesy
(1991); Carolyn Lawes,
Women and Reform in a New England Community
(2000); Nancy Hewitt,
Women’s Activism and Social Change
(1984); Nancy Cott,
The Bonds of Womanhood
, 2nd ed. (1997); and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg,
Religion and the Rise of the American City
(1971). On the place of the Awakening in working-class history, see Jama Lazerow,
Religion and the Working Class in Antebellum America
(1995) and Teresa Murphy,
Ten Hours’ Labor: Religion, Reform, and Gender in Early New England
(1992).

The Awakening occupied a prominent place in the lives of many African Americans, both free and enslaved. See Albert Raboteau,
A Fire in the Bones
(1995) and
Slave Religion
(1978); Gary Nash,
Forging Freedom
(1988); Mechal Sobel,
Trabelin’ On
(1979); John Boles, ed.,
Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord
(1988); and Carol George,
Segregated Sabbaths
(1973).

For the intellectual dimension of the Awakening, see Bruce Kuklick,
Churchmen and Philosophers
(1985); Brooks Holifield,
Theology in America
(2003); Richard Steele,
“Gracious Affection” and “True Virtue”
(1994); Mark Noll, ed.,
God and Mammon
(2002); Paul Conkin,
The Uneasy Center
(1995); Kenneth Startup,
The Root of All Evil
(1997); and Leo Hirrell’s misnamed
Children of Wrath
(1998). Examples of the various practical consequences of the Awakening can be found in Richard Carwardine,
Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America
(1993); Lori Ginzburg,
Women and the Work of Benevolence
(1990); and Benjamin Thomas,
Theodore Dwight Weld
(1950). Kathleen D. McCarthy,
American Creed: Philanthropy and the Rise of Civil Society
(2003) treats social reform movements as well as organized charities.

The interlocking network of reforms in this period derived much of their impetus from religious origins, but secular changes like the communications revolution affected them too. See Ronald Walters,
American Reformers, 1815–1860
(1978); Steven Mintz,
Moralists and Modernizers
(1995); and Bruce Dorsey,
Reforming Men and Women
(2002). On the temperance movement, see W. J. Rorabaugh,
The Alcoholic Republic
(1979); Ian Tyrell,
Sobering Up
(1979); and Mark Lender and James Martin,
Drinking in America
(1987). John Rumbarger,
Profits, Power, and Prohibition
(1989) argues that temperance was imposed on workers by their employers. The international dimension of the interrelated reforms needs more study, but see, for example, Mark Noll et al.,
Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies
(New York, 1994); Frank Thistlethwaite,
The Anglo-American Connection in the Early Nineteenth Century
(1959); and, of course, the works of David Brion Davis already mentioned.

P. J. Staudenraus,
The African Colonization Movement
(1961) remains useful, but historians have taken renewed interest in the enterprise. See, for example, Katherine Harris,
African and American Values: Liberia and West Africa
(1985); James Wesley Smith,
Sojourners in Search of Freedom
(1987); Amos Beyan,
The American Colonization Society and the Creation of the Liberian State
(1991); Lamin Sanneh,
Abolitionists Abroad
(1999); and Eric Burin,
Slavery and the Peculiar Solution
(2005).

Masonry and Antimasonry should be studied in conjunction. Steven Bullock treats the former well in
Revolutionary Brotherhood
(1996). Paul Goodman takes a more negative view of Antimasonry in
Towards a Christian Republic
(1988) than does William Vaughan,
The Anti-Masonic Party in the United States
(1983).

The seminal treatment of millennialism in American history is H. Richard Niebuhr,
The Kingdom of God in America
(1937); the literature that has grown up around it is enormous. The writings of James H. Moorhead provide a sound guide to postmillennialism, although they emphasize the period after 1848:
American Apocalypse
(1978) and
World Without End
(1999). The period before 1815 is treated in Ruth Bloch,
Visionary Republic
(1985) and Susan Juster,
Doomsayers
(2003). For postmillennialism in the period covered by this book, see Jonathan Sassi,
A Republic of Righteousness
(2001) and J. F. Maclear, “The Republic and the Millennium,” in
The Religion of the Republic
, ed. Elwyn Smith (1971). For premillennialism and the Millerites in particular, see Ruth Doan,
The Miller Heresy, Millennialism, and American Culture
(1987); Gary Land, ed.,
Adventism in America
(1986); and Ronald Numbers and Jonathan Butler, eds.,
The Disappointed
(1987). Michael Barkun,
Crucible of the Millennium
(1986) usefully links millennialism and utopianism.

Amidst a very large literature on utopian communities, especially helpful are Robert Sutton,
Communal Utopias and the American Experience
, 2 vols. (2003–4); Donald Pitzer, ed.,
America’s Communal Utopias
(1997); Christopher Clark,
The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association
(1995); Carl Guarneri,
The Utopian Alternative
(1991); and Spencer Klaw,
Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community
(1993). On Owen and his followers, see J. F. C. Harrison,
Robert Owen and the Owenites
(1969) and Arthur Bestor,
Backwoods Utopias
(1970). Edward Deming Andrews,
The People Called Shakers
(1963) retains interest, but the authoritative work is now Stephen Stein,
The Shaker Experience in America
(1992). Sterling Delano,
Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia
(2004) actually records successes as well as failures. On gender issues in utopian communities, see also Louis Kern,
An Ordered Love
(1981); Lawrence Foster,
Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments
(1981); Carol Kolmerten,
Women in Utopia
(1990); and Suzanne Thurman,
O Sisters, Ain’t You Happy?
(2002).

The comments of foreign travelers to the United States are discussed in C. Vann Woodward,
The Old World’s New World
(1991). For Lafayette’s tour, see Anne Loveland,
Emblem of Liberty
(1971). Lloyd Kramer,
Lafayette in Two Worlds
(1996) is a superb study, also very helpful on Tocqueville. George Pierson,
Tocqueville and Beaumont in America
(1938) is a classic; see also James Schleifer,
The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
(1980) and Hugh Brogan,
Alexis de Tocqueville
(2006). R. K. Webb,
Harriet Martineau, Radical Victorian
(1960) is acute but patronizing; more sympathetic are the biographies by Valerie Pinchanick (1980) and Susan Hoecker-Drysdale (1992) and Daniel Feller’s introduction to Harriet Martineau,
Retrospect of Western Travel
(2000). Also see Celia Eckhardt,
Fanny Wright
(1984).