The Push for Reform.

As rapid economic development, urbanization, and westward expansion altered the social fabric of American society, many Americans perceived a decline in public morality and civic-minded behavior and a rise in antisocial activities such as drinking, dueling, gambling, and prostitution. If such tendencies were not curbed, they believed, the republic itself, based as it was on notions of responsible citizenship, was threatened with corruption and eventual extinction. The revivals of the Second Great Awakening fed into this current of concern and encouraged people to take action against vice. The primary concern of most revival preachers was to exhort their listeners to follow the way of Christ in their hearts and in their individual conduct. But a true convert, they argued, would be more than simply a pious individual; he or she would also be an upstanding and responsible citizen who would actively seek to...