all right this is openstax u.s history chapter 13 section 2 antebellum communal experiments so one thing to reiterate with this chapter is the massive changes going on in society that really prompts some of these movements and reforms uh we already talked about the industrial revolution um you know how steam power replaced natural forms of power how that led to changes in manufacturing and transportation we didn't really talk too much about the market revolution so just kind of in short the market revolution was a change in the way that really farmers uh lived uh typically before the market revolution farmers typically you know grew their food or we might say grow to consume you know so the idea for a farmer in let's say 1790 or 1770 was to grow enough food to survive well thanks to trains the idea is to grow to sell right and this is in short what the market revolution is about it creates an economy within the united states you know where you have you know the rural areas and of course in the rural areas are the farms and then of course in the urban areas we have the rise of the oops we have the rise of the factories you know the mass production of goods and linking these communities together and this is what makes the market revolution possible are railroads right so we might say trains are sort of the missing link here um and so uh you know farmers then provide things like food to the cities they get money back and in exchange they can just pretty much buy stuff so it's kind of the emergence of this an internal economy so they're related to one another but they're affecting kind of different uh different parts of the country we'll just go ahead and kind of mark off this you know this illustration here as being what happens in the market market revolution and one of the things about the market revolution was that you know it could lead to a um you know a higher material standard of living but it also came with some some downsides you know farmers that made the switch from growing to consume to growing to sell often found themselves in a much more competitive environment dog eat dog type of world sink or swim so for some farmers this was great they made a lot of money but a lot of other farmers went out of business because now farming became a competitive aspect so that's going on in the rural areas of course everything we talked about with the industrial revolution is going on in the urban area so like we said you know this created in many ways a new society and new problems right new problems and a lot of people believe that you know these new problems were you know very very bad and that there needed to be a complete separation from american society most people are just going to look to reform right change kind of some of the things in society but there are some utopian groups in this case we'll be looking at religious utopian groups that almost want to take extreme or radical measures to recreate society so we might say of utopian societies they want to re-create in a radical way right radical way and we'll just sort of list a couple of examples of these various societies now in terms of ones that are influenced by religion we do have to recall that the second great awakening which we talked about in section 13.1 is sort of underlying all these things so church membership is skyrocketing people are going to church much more um the emphasis on individual salvation etc etc um some of these societies were just purely religious societies either piestic societies keyword being piety that means to stress all right piety above all you know sort of religious um you know religious uh you know what what's important in religion um and um the rabbits who are also you just might just call this a pieistic society these were just some of the earliest and more popular um religious communities that were completely insular in a lot of ways they were also communal um they you know in short sort of uh you know rejected the notion of like private ownership and private property and instead lived in a much more kind of communal but separate way some of the more notorious utopian societies include the shakers and the oneida community the shakers who you see pictured right here for performing this dance that's where they got the name from performing this dance lived in communities where men and women refrained from sexual intercourse so it was not allowed you know uh we also used this term uh celibacy right celibacy or complete celibacy was required amongst the shaker community men and women typically live separate from one another would come together and perform sort of this bizarre dance where they would shake all around people called them shakers and you know this was sort of one extreme in order to you know create society in a new way the belief that refraining from any sort of sexual intercourse would be the solution to all those problems in the oneida community they sort of took things to the opposite extreme the one ida community whose leader was john humphrey noyes we'll call him the leader they were maybe a more notorious group because they believed in the idea of a complex marriage and that meant that pretty much every man and woman was quote unquote married to each other and free to have sexual relations so in this case instead of you know pure celibacy like the shakers did in the one ida community um any man and any woman could engage in sexual intercourse and that was perfectly fine the oneidas they were not seen as positively as the shakers they were often required to move often prosecuted under various adultery laws etc etc so in this case is you know in looking at you know ex you know groups like the shakers and the one ida in terms of their radical views they're really looking at something like the monogamous marriage and saying you know that's something that needs to be changed or altered in order to create a more uh better or perfect society however the most uh successful of the religious movements during this era was the founding and the growth of mormonism right mormonism we might call this the most successful religious society uh joseph sorry mormonism was founded by joseph smith we'll call him the founder and leader of the mormons uh joseph smith was someone who lived in the northeast during the transition during the market revolution and so that transformation from again farming to consume to farming to sell created a you know new society new problems instability and uh you know joseph smith was visited by the angel moroni who revealed the prophecy tor to him which was later on uh or which was the which would become the book of mormon the book of mormon will call this the uh text of the mormon religion oops more mon religion i think i spelled that wrong over here again let's erase that religion and uh one thing that joseph smith and mormonism really emphasize was the idea of placing the father figure sort of at the center of the household uh mormons also uh preached a a message of order you know in kind of the chaotic world that was going on with industrialization with the market revolution the mormon church was very orderly it was very structured it was trying to reimpose that on society and also to bring a closer connection between state and church you know especially during the early 1800s and leading up to the civil war there was a very strong separation of church and state and some people believe that that maybe wasn't the right way to go considering what was happening in places like industrial cities and maybe there needs to be a community in which the state laws are the church laws and that's what mormonism provided so these things were very attractive and it was one of the reasons as to why the mormons were the most successful of these communities however they did face persecution from their you know fellow citizens joseph smith's insistence that he had sort of the right version of christianity compared to everyone else it was also very controversial when some high members of the mormon church practice polygamy that is having more than one wife and joseph smith and the mormons although a rather large group found themselves constantly having to move from one place to another they ended up in illinois where joseph smith was killed by a mob and so leadership passed to brigham young we might say he became leader of the mormons after smith and they looked to move the mormons did very far away from any type of persecution where they could freely practice their own religious beliefs but also their own community right this wasn't just attending church on sundays but it was a whole society in which there was a much closer connection between church and state and so they moved to salt lake city utah sometimes called the mormon trek or the mormon exodus salt lake city utah would be the city that the mormons moved to and even today in 2021 utah as a state has a very large mormon population mormonism is you know spread much further beyond salt lake city and utah but you certainly still have that kind of historical imprint there dating back all the way into the 1800s or at least the antebellum period let's say that mormons moved to so uh there were some uh you know a variety of various efforts to create these different sorts of religious societies um all sort of radical in a sense of trying to fundamentally change some of the um you know sort of core beliefs in american society at the time there were also some utopian societies that were secular that did not really stress religion one of them was brook farm burke farm was more of an intellectual community we might say this is also somewhat related to the transcendentalist trans what's in there transcendentalist movement one such famous member of brook farm was nathaniel hawthorne who was an author he was a member of brook farm it was very small it was only like 100 people right so there's just a group of 100 intellectuals that um you know engaged in sort of uh scholarly you know questions and uh criticized society uh you know sort of sought to separate themselves from mainstream um united states they wrote a newspaper called the heartbringer see it right here another good example of a secular utopian society is that created by robert owen robert owen was a scottish factory owner and you might look at robert owen as kind of an anti-capitalist you know he was really sort of put off by the way that workers were you know wage slave wage slaves in the words of some that there were pretty horrible working conditions workers were exploited robert owen created factories that paid well uh in which workers lived at the factories had some of the basic needs provided for and they were still productive he brought his experiment to the united states to new harmony new harmony we might say was an experiment and we'll just call it communal factory system right where you know people worked a reasonable eight-hour workday they had everything that was essentially provided for them given that they weren't paid a wage but ultimately in fighting led to the downfall of the new harmony settlement um you know it failed in the long run but you know people who sort of saw labor and you know the system that you know the factory system and industrialization brought called themselves ownites we might say that these were followers of uh of robert owen right so at least in some cases when we talk about the utopians right utopia if you're not familiar with this word means kind of like a perfect world right almost you know it's it's it's almost like it can't exist right it has to be so perfect so um you know these you know societies whether it's talking about the economic system like capitalism or a legal system uh like marriage you know trying to challenge those sort of fundamental aspects of society not a lot of people are on board with that most people are simply looking to keep capitalism keep marriage but simply reform society to make it better