Humanitarianism took two forms in America in the nineteenth century: the improvement of lives through relief measures and an attempt to eradicate the roots of social evils. Groups like the Quakers were especially sensitive to suffering and injustice. Others, unfortunately, did not see a need to end evils like slavery, cruel methods of punishment for criminals, or the life sentences given to debtors. Quakers took the lead in reform in Pennsylvania and obtained a better legal code from the state legislature. Other states soon adopted improvements. Religion was carried into the prisons and methods of education were introduced. The Volunteers of America and the American Prison Association were also Christian agencies engaged in prison reform. Lyman Beecher of Connecticut and other ministers preached against alcohol abuse while the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874, helped form a Prohibition political party. The greatest evil of the age, though, was slavery. Entrenched in the South after the cotton industry became profitable, it became the defining issue of the nineteenth century. Slowly church people in the North came to believe that they could no longer cooperate with slaveholders, and the denominational organizations of Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians split apart. When Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin became a sensation, its story depicting the horrors of slavery fully awoke the Northern churches to the necessity of abolition. When the Civil War began in 1861 it was not only a war for the preservation of the Union against the secession of the slaveholding states, it was also a crusade for the emancipation of the slaves. Churches provided chaplains for the armies on both sides. The end came with a victory for the Union and the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Abraham Lincoln had issued in 1863.
Impact: While some reform efforts were successful, others failed over time. The net result to the churches, however, was an increased fervor to apply the Christian message of hope to every aspect of life.