Abolitionism and Temperance
Two of the primary social movements that are associated with the Second Great Awakening were the temperance movement and the abolition movement. Both of these were rooted in the belief that their respective issues were actually sins that threatened our nation and therefore needed to be eradicated.
According to a secondary source, "The Origins of the Temperance Movement: A Reinterpretation"1, the movement found its roots in rural, small areas in which Protestants believed that alcohol's effects were spiritually dangerous, particularly for the family and the younger generation.
Evangelical leaders, including Presbyterian and Congregationalist ministers, were instrumental in shifting the religious and social attitudes toward liquor. They began to portray alcohol as a moral and spiritual threat, urging total abstinence not just for the poor but also for their own communities. These early reformers were not concerned with regulating taverns or tempering the habits of the lower classes, but rather with purifying society through personal and family abstinence. Additionally, non-holy people also spoke out in support of the movement. One of these, former Amherst College President Edward Hitchcock published a 10 page written pamphlet, drawing from both biblical and scientific references, arguing for the practice of temperance.2
The rise of the temperance movement cannot be solely attributed to industrialization or urbanization. Rather, it was deeply rooted in the religious and social dynamics of the early 19th century, particularly within evangelical Protestant communities. These reformers feared the moral decay caused by liquor and sought to protect the nation's spiritual health by promoting complete abstinence from alcohol.
Similarly, abolitionism, which arose in the 1830s, was also framed as a religious struggle against the sin of slavery, advocating for moral and social reform rather than immediate political action. This movement was instrumental in shaping anti-slavery attitudes in the United States leading up to the Civil War.
In contrast to the temperance movement, abolition was not as popularly and widely recieved. Rather, these often were met with anger and at times, violence and were widely controversial. Evangelical preachers often preached about the spiritual freedom that Christ offered, which abolitionists then connected to the idea of freedom from slavery. In this way, the language of spiritual freedom helped to frame the abolitionist cause as a righteous and divinely supported movement.
The secondary source, “The Power of Religious Activism in Tocqueville’s America: The Second Great Awakening and the Rise of Temperance and Abolitionism in New York State.”'s3 research on the connections between the Second Great Awakening concludes that Evangelical movements linked to the Second Great Awakening played a significant role in shaping the formation and expansion of both temperance and abolition movements in the United States.