Second Great Awakening Effects on the North

Many events in history caused issues in religion and knowledge, but the Second Great Awakening is a major landmark in history. Baptism and Evangelical Methodism were extremely popular denominations all over America that was due to the Protestant revival movement. The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival lead by the preacher Charles G. Finney and the minister Alexander Campbell. The revival was based on the idea of acting with moral preciseness and showing faith to God by doing good things within society. The Second Great Awakening influenced the entire country, but it influenced the northern part of America more than it did in the south. The center of revivalism was the so called Burned-over district, named by Charles Finney, in western New York. Named for its surplus of hellfire and damnation preaching, the region produced multiple new denominations, communal societies, and reform. As a whole this religious revival encouraged democratic ideas and made the standard of the common man better. The Second Great Awakening very important because it affected abolition in where people were enlightened to help and get rid of slavery, in order to confront the issue of temperance by discouraging drinking and alcohol, and cults of domesticity to understand how women were “supposed” to act. Abolition was affected in ways where people were beginning to think about the effects of slavery due to the enlightenment which resulted in many protests and movements. Temperance mainly affected women where they hated the effects of alcohol and to ban it. Cult of Domesticity largely affected the upper and middle class by emphasizing the roles of femininity and their ways of affecting their families.

Slavery was an issue that the north and south of America debated on years before the Second Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening inspired northerners to take a stand on slavery and confront the south on this serious issue. Many Protestants began to think in ways of how slavery was affecting the people and that it was wrong to be using slaves for a person’s own work. In the past northerners did not care that the south was involved with slavery because slavery was not in their region of the country. This religious revival inspired the north to take a stand on slavery even though slavery was not allowed in the north. The followers of William Lloyd Garrison, including Wendell Phillips, and Frederick Douglass, demanded the "immediate abolition of slavery". William Lloyd Garrison wrote the Liberator, which was a newspaper that was against the effects of slavery, and it was published for people to see and learn from. He was extremely important during the Second Great Awakening because he helped bring the idea of freeing the slaves to the forefront of America. Many other Abolitionists rose up and followed Garrison such as Harriet Tubman and Thomas Garrett. Harriet Tubman was a former slave who had escaped and eventually helped hundreds of other