Moralists and Modernizers

Steven Mintz. Moralists and Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Published twenty years ago, this brief volume is still an excellent introduction to the topic of pre-Civil War reform both religious and secular. Chapter 1, "The Specter of Social Breakdown", briefly sketches the context of economic, social, and political insecurity and turmoil within which these different, often overlapping, reform impulses and movements arose. From there, Mintz devotes four chapters to generally thematic considerations of the topic. In general, Chapters 2 and 3 consider religion and religious movements such as Millenialism and the centrality of liberal Protestantism and evangelicalism to many reform efforts, while Chapters 4 and 5 look at secular movements such as poorhouses, asylums for the mentally ill, penitentiaries, and common schools.

Mintz places his interpretation midway between two poles--early interpretators of Antebellum reformers who praised them for their humanity and credited them with many lasting improvements in American society, versus later revisionists who focused on the middle-class biases and coercive aspects of the era. Mintz argues that both schools of thought have merit but that neither can be considered definitive. More concretely, he argues that the legacy of those reformers needs to be redeemed from the generally condemnation that revisionist historians applied to them. Their motives were more complex and varied--and often more sincerely altruistic--than the revisionists were generally willing to allow.

All of the discussions are necessarily brief, and are intended for the general reader and the student. It is an excellent introduction to the topic, which closes with an Epilogue tying Antebellum reform to the larger American liberal tradition.