hi everyone today we'll be looking at three things first the changes in religion that resulted from what we know as the second great awakening in american history second the major reform movements of the era that largely sprang from that religious impulse and third the utopian communities of the period that took the religious inspiration of the time as a cue to try and create their own models of a so-called perfect social order as we can get an idea from our first sketch here the second great awakening was much like the first great awakening of the 1730s and 1740s a massive series of religious revivals that spread across the country first from the northeast and then to other parts of the nation its peak years ran from around 1820 to 1840 also just as the first great awakening began as a reaction to the early forces of market capitalism and the anxieties and uncertainties it generated the second wave of revivals in the 19th century were largely a reaction to the advent of the market revolution the panic of 1819 and a fear that is the country lost its sense of religious purpose and the obsession over markets and getting ahead or just trying to survive the very walls of society were starting to collapse in on themselves in a telling sign of the times the two fastest growing careers in the united states during these years were slave traders and preachers the revivals were enormous affairs that often went on for days tents were erected to accommodate believers in the hundreds and even thousands here we have some color sketches of these massive camp meetings as they were called the portion of the country where these religious impulses tended to generate outward from in upstate new york was known as the burned over district because of all the different spiritual reform and even utopian movements that came out of the region this map gives us an idea of how it got its name the area was filled with everything from anti-slavery reformers to millennialists utopian dreamers and just your average protestant religious revivalists the most famous and influential evangelist of the second great awakening was the man we see in this painting charles grandison finney he had a special message for americans of the period although all were born sinners according to christian theology finney suggested that individuals could overcome sin and temptation and secure their own salvation as what he called free agents people could choose to turn away from sin and toward god the lord in turn rewarded such efforts with the promise of eternal life in heaven it was a complete and total rejection of the old calvinist doctrine of predestination which claimed that god saved arbitrarily and that individuals had no control over their eternal fate finney carried his idea still further applying it not just to individuals but the entire social order if one person acting of their own free will chose to turn away from sin that was unquestionably a good thing if they managed to remain consistent in turning their lives toward god it would lead inevitably to their salvation but that was just one individual what if that person a sinner who had turned to the light passed the message on to another a troubled soul who lived on the same street perhaps and what if that individual also turned away from a life of sin and decided to help another in their neighborhood as free agents reaching towards the goodness of god americans could remake their neighborhoods their cities their states and ultimately the nation over again maybe even ushering in the millennium itself christ returned to earth to conquer evil and reign over a thousand years of peace a bedrock concept and christian belief vinnie carried his message everywhere but he was most popular throughout the northeast and especially in the areas of new york's burned over district where he spoke to workers in the budding factories along the erie canal in places like rochester and buffalo he urged laborers to do things like turn away from drink work hard go to church take care of their families seek to educate their children and help and encourage their neighbors to do the same things these were all actions they could perform even in a world where market forces seem to strip them of freedom in every conceivable way if they did these things vinnie told the workers god would reward them with everlasting life factory owners also liked finney's message it fit perfectly with their vision of an ordered society where labor was reliable sober and deficient this notion of taking a religious impulse and making the world over again to correct its imperfections and evils became known as christian perfectionism society could it was believed by many be made perfect through the efforts of people free agents determined to shape it toward god's ends this concept of christian perfectionism ran through the revivals of the period through the major reform movements of the era and was especially strong in the utopian communities of the antebellum ears if the driving force behind the second great awakening was the market revolution and the anxieties that resulted from events like the panic of 1819 the close second factor was the worries of white native born middle class protestant americans and christians who looked at things like the rise in irish immigration crime in american cities and high rates of alcohol consumption and saw the country they knew crumbling around them they felt like a class besieged reform efforts in the middle decades of the 19th century shaped their response to what they saw as a societal crisis for example judging from their sermons protestant clergymen of the era saw what they called intemperance the mass consumption of distilled liquors by americans as the country's single greatest sin and one that in their words was spreading like the plague the united states was on its way to becoming in their view little more than a nation of drunkards here we have a sketch of the period capturing a common scene americans bellying up to the bar for a drink european visitors to the u.s and the antebellum period noted that drunkenness wasn't their expression everywhere prevalent to the point of being again and their phrasing scandalous it was the consensus among a wide variety of observers that americans drank great quantities of alcohol the beverages they drank were primarily distilled liquors commonly known as spirits which included whiskey rum gin and brandy on the average those liquors were 45 alcohol or in the language of distillers 90 proof it was the unrestrained consumption of liquors of such potency that amazed travelers and alarmed so many americans there was cause for concern during the first third of the 19th century the typical american drank annually more booze than at any other time in our history between 1800 and 1830 annual per capita consumption of distilled liquor exceeded five gallons a rate nearly three times that of today's consumption then there was the fact that in addition to hard liquor americans drank weaker fermented beverages such as beer hard cider and wine alcohol was pervasive in antebellum society crossing regional class racial and gender lines americans drank at home and abroad by themselves and socially at work and at play they drank from the crack of dawn to the crack of dawn by night taverns were filled with boisterous laughing and sometimes violent patrons americans drank before meals with meals and after meals they drank in their youth and if they lived long enough in their old age they drank at formal events such as weddings and wakes and on no occasion sitting by the fireside in the evening relaxing in a rocking chair on the front porch on a hot afternoon or just when the mood called in logged taverns along the frontier of western settlement and in fancy new york hotel bar rooms like the one on our sketch here the antebellum american greeting was come sir take a dram first seldom was it refused the problem of alcohol consumption gave rise to the greatest reform effort of the 19th century in the united states what became known as the temperance movement the need for reform was not simply driven by the frightening levels of consumption but the societal ills that resulted from it an entire genre of literature came into existence that were called temperance novels they told the story of individuals families and communities destroyed by demon liquor tales of incest domestic abuse and neglected homes filled the pages of these books and people bought and read them in larger and larger numbers in the middle decades of the eighteen hundreds many included illustrations such as this one that emphasized the damage done to families wives and children by alcohol abuse particularly when it turned violent some stories pointed out that even in cases where a violent husband was not an issue family poverty was always a constant threat when wages went to booze instead of supporting households the reality captured in this sketch if there was one theme that unified the temperance novels of the era it was the downward spiral from the innocent first drink to dependence poverty and even death that marked what was called as we see in this illustration the drunkard's progress from the first glass to the grave women outnumbered men two to one within the ranks of the temperance movement for the obvious reasons that they were threatened by domestic abuse and impoverishment as well as their children they formed temperance societies and clubs all across the country held rallies meetings and did all they could to raise public consciousness concern and action to if not eradicate then greatly reduce the hold alcohol consumption had over american society in the period the religious impulse of trying to remake and perfect the social order was strong within the temperance movement it was often described as a holy war that american women were engaged in a notion captured in this sketch of the time temperance advocates came up with an array of creative techniques to try and get their message across there were even temperance songs with original lyrics and music such as this one entitled the lips that touch liquor she'll never touch mine which was both humorous and serious no doubt at the same time the temperance effort got a boost in the 1840s with the advent of what became known as the washingtonian movement a sort of early iteration of today's alcoholics anonymous members met regularly told their stories supported their fellows and sought out other drunkards and the vernacular of the day to try and convince them to take the washingtonian pledge of t totalism complete abstinence from drink a moment captured in this sketch from the period temperance was not just the biggest reform movement of the era it was also the most successful alcohol consumption in the united states was cut in half by 1850 public education was another major reform effort of the period but it was not an antebellum invention the puritans of new england held the traditional protestant conviction that all believers should be able to read the bible and they had begun common schools in the 17th century in the 18th century such influential figures as benjamin franklin and thomas jefferson wrote about the need for education and assisted efforts to improve it schools nonetheless were poorly conducted and attendance was irregular until the middle of the 19th century even in new england although there were local variations in many places children of the wealthy were taught in private institutions or at home by special tutors but between 1830 and 1860 in the north a great change occurred and leading the way was massachusetts in 1837 the state created its first board of education and its first secretary was horace mann who we see here for more than a decade mann used his post to promote innovations in public schooling the list of massachusetts achievements in the field of public education during the antebellum period before during and after man's time as secretary or notable in addition to establishing the first board of education the bay state created the first public high school in 1821 the first teacher training school and what were called normal schools in 1839 and the first compulsory school attendance law in 1852 educational reformers like man received backing from evangelical protestants who realized that public education would be from their vantage point morally sound and an ally to their own sunday schools and bible and tracked societies the more prosperous and skilled segments of the working classes also demanded free public schooling seeing it as a means of protecting their own citizenship rights the urban professional and middle classes although not generally in financial need of free public schools still found much to their liking in the rhetoric of horus mann and his colleagues it reassured them that social tensions could be resolved easily education man told them does better than disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich it prevents being poor school reform played just as well to the darker side of middle class america men and women who felt besieged by things like irish immigration worried about what would become of the republic if its people declined in virtue many middle class protestants believed they saw exactly that happening all around them foreigners and poppers made the cities unpleasant and threatening for respectable folk schools provided an answer particularly in the case of the irish as this sketch from the period shows middle class americans believed it was near hopeless to try and reform adults who corrupted their own children with habits of criminality and intemperance not to mention catholicism as horus man put it free public schools were the means by which what he called decent americans could free themselves in his words from the low-minded and the vicious not by their expatriation but by their elevation education would teach good behavior and make the dangerous classes trustworthy over time they may not be able to save the parents but children were more pliable and easily molded in the classroom as this sketch implies the young could be shaped to american middle class protestant values and steered away from the so-called vices of their parents the curriculum of the new public schools reflected these goals our system man wrote inculcates all christian morals everything had a moral purpose even exercise and play textbooks taught virtue as much as literacy a popular reader of the 1840s for instance had a lesson entitled danger of bad habits it warned that vice is not a thing to be trifled with there was no room for doubt or disobedience public school students and especially poor immigrant children learned self-control punctuality all the protestant and patriotic virtues and intolerance for different styles of life in the case of immigrant students of course this often meant rejecting the values of their own families the school reformers like man were proud of their work in the 1850s the boston school committee with the irish clearly in mind described its noble task as taking children at random from a great city undisciplined uninstructed often with confederate forwardness and obstinacy and with the inherited stupidity of centuries of ignorant ancestors forming them from animals into intellectual beings and from intellectual beings into spiritual beings the public schools may have been free but they created as many problems as they offered solutions to immigrants and their families and did to not solve the issues of crime and poverty in america's cities either free public schools were viewed as providing a critical link between the home and the state itself the model of the nuclear family and particularly the white middle class protestant home composed of a man and a woman and their immediate offspring was only just coming into vogue in the middle decades of the 19th century it was a model that fit nicely and was tied directly to the forces of the market revolution the competitive public realm of the capitalist marketplace was a world of men the home became a model setting that served as both retreat from the anxieties and stresses of the market and as a sort of utopian bubble where virtuous children could be raised the future republican mothers and male citizen leaders of the nation if the public marketplace was a realm exclusive to men one author of the period decided that the home should be placed under the authority and direction of women catherine beecher who we see here pioneered the concept of separate spheres for men and women it was a form of republican motherhood updated for the mid 19th century much like her predecessors of the revolutionary era beecher emphasized expanding educational opportunities for girls and young women but when she published her best-selling work with the incredibly exciting title a treatise on domestic economy in 1841 her chief contribution was to completely reimagine the relationship between the home and the state and the contribution that women could make to the republican experiment this is the cover of beecher's work a revised and expanded edition released in 1848 she emphasized three critical roles for women when it came to running their homes wives homemakers and mothers as a wife every american woman should cultivate the kind of skills and knowledge that could truly turn their home into a sanctuary a retreat for their husband so that he could face each new challenging day in the competitive and cutthroat marketplace completely refreshed and focused this meant to some extent taking his mind off of work through distracting conversation about the kids popular entertainments news stories politics and scientific topics of the day which required a broader education than most american girls received in the mid 19th century a knowledge of market trends and prices for all kinds of produce and manufactured goods was critical to any woman's successful management of a home which made reading the papers a daily responsibility but it was the role of mother that was most important of all here beecher emphasized the duty of raising virtuous children capable of shouldering the responsibilities of citizenship and motherhood into the next generation which was not a new idea but her suggestions on exactly how to instill virtue in a child was corporal punishment and physical coercion up until the middle and later decades of the 19th century was the norm beecher argued this was not the best way to instill virtue in children because even though it may produce correct behavior it failed to teach virtue and understanding of why certain behaviors in children were appropriate and others not beecher insisted that emotional manipulation particularly withholding affection from misbehaving children worked much more effectively and produced in them a mental state where values and lessons could be taught learned and retained in addition to beecher's best-selling book a whole host of women's advice magazines as they were known catered to a white middle class and protestant female audience that subscribed to them by the thousands the most popular ladies publication of the time which we have in 1849 issue of here was goatee's ladies book the central theme of beecher's work what became known as the science of domesticity ran through most of the women's magazines of the era too american women were expected to send husbands out into the capitalist marketplace each day ready to meet its competitive challenges thus driving the growth of the national economy they were expected to manage an economical home that could endure hard or uncertain times and raise children capable of becoming the future republican mothers and citizen leaders of the republic women's role in the success or failure of the american experiment was critical we are so conditioned today to accept the idea of the nuclear household as the norm that we've generally forgotten there was a time in our history before that was the case in the early and middle decades of the 19th century an array of utopian millennial and perfectionist societies challenged the household model of one man one woman and their immediate offspring as the best blueprint for american society the group that made the earliest impact and which enjoyed a membership in the thousands by the 1830s and 1840s was the shakers as this sketch which lampooned the sect shows they were first known in england as the shaking quakers because of their proclivity for dancing in their pacifism and their recognition of men and women as spiritual equals the shakers were identical to the quakers but their theological beliefs spring not just from quakerism but the religious visions of their founder mother ann lee who we have an imagined sketch of here she was an extraordinary person her backstory goes a long way toward explaining the foundations of shaker religious belief as a young woman growing up in england she described always being uncomfortable with the idea of sexuality and resisted marriage until it was forced upon her by her father she had four children none of which survived infancy after the loss of her last child she described having visions from god who was dual in nature both male and female the lord showed her the way to the holiest existence a person could live a completely celibate life that acknowledged the equality of the sexes and where people worked hard in anticipation of the second coming of christ the millennium after facing nearly two decades of persecution in england mother anne and a small group of followers left for america arriving in new york toward the end of 1774 just on the eve of the revolutionary war they ended up settling near where albany is today during the conflict as pacifists the shakers refused to take sides but in the 1780s mother anne began her evangelical mission carrying her message throughout new england and beginning to attract followers she and her group faced persecution and the new united states also even violence by all accounts the strain and effort finally overcame mother anne she died in 1784 at the age of 48. but by the early decades of the 19th century her followers succeeded in using her testimony and personal story which we have a publication of here to build communities of believers from new york all the way to kentucky no doubt as we may be able to gather from this sketch shaker dances were not just part of religious worship and ceremony they were also the site where all of the sexual tension within shaker societies was released and while managed shakers were most known publicly for their dancing and celibate lifestyle over time americans recognized them for other reasons uh principal saying among the shakers was hands to work hearts to god they believed that their work as well as their devotion were ways of honoring and loving god and in fact did not really distinguish between the two this illustration demonstrates the idea of the shakers as hard workers among other skills the shakers became known for the beauty and simplicity of their construction techniques and building churches this is a shaker church in upstate new york built in the 1820s one of the more famous aspects of shaker churches were there spiral stairwells which we have a couple of examples of here they were also widely known for the high quality of their artisan and craft work here we have a shaker spinning loom for weaving fabric some samples of the kinds of homeware that they produced and furniture shaker chairs sold extremely well and were in high demand one question that always comes up with the shakers is how the faith managed to grow over time when they were completely celibate and produced none of their own offspring while some individuals joined the shakers as adults what allowed the shakers to grow was the fact that they took in orphans at their own expense and raised them as their own children no one was forced or coerced into shakerism when individuals who'd been taken in came of age they were free to leave if they chose what may seem surprising is that almost no one did perhaps part of the reason why beyond matters of faith is that shaker communities were generally very well off and even affluent by the standards of the time they lived comfortably and likely many felt that they were better off remaining where they were if anyone suffered misfortune as a shaker the community lifted them up and took care of them in mainstream society that was far from the case another utopian religious society not as large as the shakers numbering only in the hundreds at its peak in the 1850s but just as well known was the oneida community established by john humphrey noyes who we have here not unlike mother anne lee noye's personal story provided much of the impetus for the specific tenets of religious practice at oneida as a young divinity school student at yale noyes had fallen in love with a woman who was already engaged to another man despite his pleading noye's love was not requited he was devastated years later he did get married but clearly never got over his emotional scar he began to imagine a kind of society that could prevent the kind of pain he felt as a jilted suitor alter the traditional relations between men and women and exalt god above all else at the same time he and his wife had a son but also suffered through miscarriages some of which nearly killed mrs noyes determined not to place harriet's life at risk any longer noise began practicing and mastering what he would call male continence to avoid impregnating her at some point his personal practices and religious musings started to crystallize into the vision that resulted in the community at oneida in noyes utopia what he called exclusive love would disappear in favor of a system of complex marriage where everyone was married to everyone else women would be protected by the practice of male continence and a system of what noise described as mutual criticism would reinforce community beliefs norms and behaviors with a small group of followers he launched the community at oneida in new york's burned over district in 1848 just like the shakers oneida became known for the things it produced and sold to the public which included freshly grown produce but especially animal traps so well made it was said they could endure a russian winter no doubt part of what drew more people to oneida over time in addition to its unique religious and sexual practices was the economic security the community offered here we have a photograph of noise and his followers together in the 1850s they all lived in what was called the mansion house and not without reason as pictures of it today can attest here we have a couple of images complex marriage at oneida as conceived by noise extended the idea of family to encompass the entire community where all men and women were married to each other resisting the selfish urge to love exclusively finding their truest experience of freedom not in romantic attachments but in the subjugation of those desires to the even greater love and glorification of god the practice of male continence crucial to the functioning of complex marriage required the men of the community to refrain from ejaculation during intercourse with the purpose not just of protecting community women from pregnancy but guaranteeing that community men practiced the kind of unselfish discipline that made them worthy of salvation of the kind of freedom that noise insisted only the love of god first before all else could bring mutual criticism operated as the chief regulatory mechanism at oneida where individual members most often voluntarily submitted to a personal critique by other members criticism was always delivered in terms of community ideals and beliefs and the extent to which individuals were either living up to community standards or falling short of them noise argued that monogamy made a man or woman unfit to practice the two central principles of christianity loving god and loving one's neighbor as he explained exclusive attachment to a spouse turns the attention from god and one's fellow man when it is preferable he concluded for a man to love everyone equally and to give his greatest love to god the equality of affection among men and women sought through complex marriage for those possessed of the self-control and submissiveness to achieve it promised true freedom through absolute subjugation to god not via the illusion of romantic love together complex marriage and male continence work to enforce the message that a perfect society was a selfless one where equality of affections among men and women ideally reflected the central purpose of placing love of god and subjugation to his will first above all else and is the only pathway to salvation outside observers not knowing what went on inside the mansion house at oneida called the members free lovers then imagined roman orgies taking place with everyone sleeping with everyone but nothing could have been further from the truth everything at oneida was highly ordered according to noy's scheme of perfectionism anytime a man and woman wanted to engage in sexual activities they had to make a formal request to a committee of community elders typically headed by noise only those approved could go forward typically older men who had mastered the practice of male continence slept with younger women and younger men who had not or could not yet be relied upon slept with older women less likely to become pregnant and often past menopause the proof that male continence was actually practiced at oneida lies in the fact that only a tiny number of unwanted pregnancies occurred there in the 30 years of the community's existence neither of the shakers after the time of mother anly nor the perfectionists of the oneida community engaged in evangelizing they did not try to go out into mainstream society and convert others to their way of believing because of this for most of their existence neither group generated much public controversy or even opposition if anything people just thought they were odd or strange not a major threat to the broader social order this was not the case with the group we know today as the mormons or their founder joseph smith who we have here in this portrait painting born in vermont in 1805 joseph smith moved in 1816 with his family who were struggling farmers to palmyra new york smack in the heart of the religiously vibrant burned over district after a revival swept the area in 1820 a 14 year old smith claimed to have had his first vision that spring he said he saw a glorious divine being or beings who told him that all existing churches were wrong and that his own sins were forgiven three years later he saw an angel named moroni who told him of golden plates on which were inscribed truths of the gospel moroni said god had chosen smith to prepare the world for the return of christ under moroni's direction as we get an idea of from these illustrations smith went to a nearby hill dug up the plates which took the form of a golden three-ringed binder and found them covered with egyptian hieroglyphs moroni gave him a golden breast plate with special glasses attached to read the symbols which we see represented here but moroni told smith to delay the translation shortly thereafter smith got married settling with his wife in harmony pennsylvania in 1827 he began a three-year process of translating the plates sitting behind a curtain he read from the plates as others transcribed his words here we have a couple of images representing the translation of the golden plates the result was the book of mormon published first in 1830 this is an original copy to demonstrate the authenticity of the golden plates smith printed in the book of mormon brief testimonies by 11 witnesses friends of his who allegedly had seen them one witness later confessed he saw the plagues not normally but in his words with the eyes of faith though at the time they were covered with a cloth with the publication of the book of mormon the seed of the church was planted april people helped establish it one well-off convert organized the church's move in 1830 to kirtland ohio where smith and others created a tightly governed community that held property in common smith reported having divine visions and performing miracles such as healing diseases walking on water and raising the dead another group of mormons settled in missouri in 1838 financial troubles and internal bickering led smith and many of the other ohio mormons to join the community in missouri where new problems arose outsiders had little tolerance for these self-proclaimed saints who warned that they alone would survive the fast approaching day of judgment also rumors swirled of polygamy among the mormons a power struggle broke out when smith announced that god had designated a large part of the state of missouri is what he called the new jerusalem armed conflict erupted as the state militia attacked the mormons who fled across the mississippi river to illinois there they established the town of nauvoo where they built a new temple and a university and had their own militia once again though conflict broke out an 1844 polygamy case resulted in the arrest of smith and others including his brother he was placed in a weakly guarded jail that was overwhelmed by an angry mob in the ensuing melee smith and his brother hiram were killed the event's been interpreted in art many times here's a sample the first showing the angry mob assembling outside the jail then their cell room stormed and smith's brother shot as he attempts to leap from the second story window only to be surrounded and shot by the mob below on the street becoming in the process a martyr one of smith's dynamic associates who we see here brigham young took over the church realizing that the mormons needed to find a place of their own brigham young led them over a thousand miles to the great salt lake basin in utah at the time still part of mexico there the mormons finally prospered growing exponentially in the years ahead theologically mormonism believed in faith repentance and baptism it held that all other religions were false and that the book of mormon was a true record of ancient history its view of the afterlife was benign envisioning three realms after death the highest to be inhabited by the saints and the lowest by sinners but even the lowest was blissful compared with earth polygamy was the church's most controversial practice previous american prophets had endorsed plural marriage but the mormons institutionalized it for joseph smith celestial or patriarchal marriage was essential preparation for the highest exaltation in the afterlife the more wives and children a man had the more spiritually enabled he became brigham young for example was quite spiritually enabled as this photo of just some of his wives attests some americans responded to mormon polygamy with amusement but the most common response was outrage the federal government pressured young's followers to ban polygamy the united states supreme court officially outlawed it in 1879 the mainstream church officially did so in 1890 but plural marriage was so important to mormon doctrine and culture that some church leaders practiced it covertly while others formed a fundamentalist church to maintain it some 30 to 50 000 polygamist fundamentalists live in utah to this day mormonism is the united states unique exclusively homegrown contribution to protestant christianity one of the reasons other than polygamy that the mormons ran into trouble was that they were unlike the shakers in the oneida community a strongly evangelical faith determined to convert as many to what they believed was the only true faith as possible if evangelism brought them into conflict it also brought them followers the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints began as a tiny group of six members in 1830 within four decades it had 60 000 members in time it became a mega church claiming a worldwide membership of over 12 million today one of the underpinnings of the mormon faith the second coming of jesus christ became the defining feature of the sect that developed around william miller who we have here in this sketch a massachusetts native who divided his adulthood between vermont and upstate new york although miller did not establish a formal church his prophecy that christ was about to return created an unprecedented stir throughout the northeast most christian churches took the post-millennial view that christ's return would come after a thousand years of heaven on earth some like miller held the pre-millennial position that christ's advent would occur before the millennium although pre-millennialism had been around for centuries rarely did it attract such attention as when william miller offered alleged biblical proof that in 1843 christ would reappear and pass judgment on all humans sending the saints to heaven and the sinners to hell zealously devout miller wanted to prove christianity logically he spent many years carefully perusing the bible before making his claim that jesus was about to return to earth the book of daniel says the sanctuary will be cleansed in 2 300 days using the day year principle by which one old testament day equals one modern year miller figured out that christ would return sometime between march 1 1843 and march 1st 1844 he began lecturing publicly about this prophecy in the early 1830s when he was ordained a baptist minister for over a decade he tirelessly crisscrossed the northeast giving countless sermons about the second coming millerite revivals attracted thousands millerite magazines sprouted here we have the cover of a millerite newspaper and an example of some of the graphic color illustrations that people found inside the millerite publications opponents ridiculed him but that only increased the public's interest when 1843 came millennial fever reached epidemic proportions all that year traveling preachers announced the imminent day of judgment at huge camp meetings by the end of the year over fifty thousand americans were convinced that the end was near perhaps as many as a million others were expectant if dubious march 1st 1844 came and went the appointed year was over but the excitement did not die miller said that his math was wrong now he insisted that october 22nd 1844 was the day again anticipation mounted october 22nd arrived and brought the great disappointment that was what miller writes called the day some attempted yet more revision of the biblical numbers miller himself set a new date for the millennium of spring 1845 others dropped the idea of an exact date altogether many more abandoned millerism and returned to traditional churches miller himself died in 1849 but he had given impetus to what we know as adventism destined to be a powerful strain in american religion carried on by large movements such as the seventh-day adventists and the jehovah's witnesses all of the utopian religious communities of the period imagined themselves as alternative models to the mainstream social order of the day but in the end the real purpose they served was to reinforce and make appear more normal and acceptable the very societal structures they sought to challenge namely the idea of the middle class protestant market-oriented nuclear household the middle-class protestant home by the later decades of the 19th century was what most americans thought about when they dreamed of utopia okay so that does it for today next time we'll take a look at the story of the cherokee indians and what became known as the mexican war at the end of the 1840s