The National Period was marked by dramatic social innovations and reforms whose aims were to ameliorate the harmful effects of the accelerating market economy and uprooted social moorings. Founded by Whigs, or individuals with whig-like sympathies, these innovations took the form of new institutions. Imbued with moral fervor they shouldered responsibility for people living on the periphery of the market economy and social life, the indigent poor, the mentally ill, the criminal. They assumed the roles of caretakers and educators for castoff dependants who were formerly the wards of families and local communities. The National Period was also distinguished by the Whig-led social movement to establish state systems of publicly-funded schools. The Common School Movement, which addressed the reformers' moral and civic concerns regarding the fragility of the American republic and the tightening grip of the national market economy. An inspiration, source of moral fervor, and model of organizing tactics for promoting these social innovations was the Second Great Awakening, a term that denotes the long run of Protestant revivalism in the US from the early 1800s to the 1840s and recalls the shorter, though similarly intense, spasm of revival in the 1730s and 1740s, the First Great Awakening. The greatest preacher of the Second Great Awakening was Charles Grandison Finney, who left an indelible mark on the Erie Canal boomtown of Rochester, New York. Through his revivals of 1830-31, Finney demonstrated a means for reconciling the critical tension between self interested competitive individualism, the keystone principle of the national market economy and the civic virtues and habits necessary to maintain a safe and orderly society. Finney's instrument for effecting this reconciliation was religious, invoking his charismatic personality and formidable powers of exhortation, prayer and social persuasion. Presumably, by experiencing religious conversion and embracing the tenets of Evangelical Protestantism, employers and wage earners alike would internalize self control, act honorably and extend respect to their fellow Christians, employers in their business dealings and their relationships with employees, wage earners on the shop floor, and in their private lives. Recognizing that Protestant revivalism was educational at heart, Whig reformers adopted revivalist education tactics, especially exhortation and social persuasion in their crusades for social reforms. Whig reformers were imbued with much the same moral fervor as the circuit riding Baptist and Methodist Evangelical ministers of the Second Great Awakening. They were secular Evangelists for their causes. The story in David L'Abri aptly notes the interface of the Second Great Awakening and the dramatic social innovations of the 1830s and 40s, the most comprehensive of which was the common school movement. L'Abri argues that while the new institutions of the national period provided custodial care for indigents and other cast offs from a rapidly transforming society, their primary aim was conversion. Their primary instrument for accomplishing this aim was education. L'Abri writes, quote, The penitentiary was supposed to be a place for the inmate to become penitent, develop new work habits, and then return to society as a self-regulating and productive participant. The hospital and asylum were supposed to rehabilitate patients and prepare them to take on responsibility as citizens, family members, and workers. The poorhouse took care of the elderly who were unable to take care of themselves, but it also sought to retrain the younger and more able inmates in order to reintroduce them into the labor force. Every correctional officer, nurse, and attendant in these institutions was considered a kind of teacher. Whig leaders of the Common School Movement are properly viewed as Evangelists for the nonsectarian cause of civic and moral education in the service of the Republic. By their idealistic lights a common schooling for all American children, one that was single mindedly dedicated to the education of upstanding citizens would obviate the need for future poorhouses, asylums, and penitentiaries. Using ministerial tactics, exhortation, and moral persuasion, Whig educational leaders strive to convert the nation to their point of view. In our next episode we look at the most important school reformer of the National Period, Horace Mann of Massachusetts.
