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In the generation after the American Revolution, there was as much cause for despair as for celebration. Violence of all sorts surged. Rates of homicide rose above those in England. Even family murders - men killing their wives and children - spiked to levels unmatched in the nineteenth century. Urban rioting grew more common and destructive, leaving lives and property in ruins.
Drinking soared to an all-time high. Americans consumed about five gallons of pure alcohol per person each year - the highest rate ever recorded anywhere, before or since. Courts held dram breaks instead of coffee breaks, with judges and juries passing bottles around. Universities saw record riots and student defiance. It was a society both intoxicated and unsettled, leaving many to wonder what exactly they had unleashed.
Religion, too, was in ferment. The Anglican and Puritan dominance of the 1760s gave way to Methodists and Baptists, their horseback ministers carrying revival across the frontier. At Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801, tens of thousands gathered for what was hailed as “the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit since the beginning of Christianity.” The scenes were wild - people rolling on the ground, laughing, moaning, crying. Critics joked that more souls were conceived than converted. Yet from these upheavals sprang new sects: Shakers, Universalists, evangelical movements that bloomed and vanished, and a decade later, the Mormons. Some were founded by women, many flared out quickly, but all testified to the volatility of belief.
By 1815, as the revolutionary generation passed from the scene, the founders looked on a nation they barely recognized. Instead of harmony, they saw disorder; instead of sober republican virtue, a society drinking, rioting, and praying itself into a bewildering array of directions.
In the generation after the American Revolution, there was as much cause for despair as for celebration. Violence of all sorts surged. Rates of homicide rose above those in England. Even family murders - men killing their wives and children - spiked to levels unmatched in the nineteenth century. Urban rioting grew more common and destructive, leaving lives and property in ruins.
Drinking soared to an all-time high. Americans consumed about five gallons of pure alcohol per person each year - the highest rate ever recorded anywhere, before or since. Courts held dram breaks instead of coffee breaks, with judges and juries passing bottles around. Universities saw record riots and student defiance. It was a society both intoxicated and unsettled, leaving many to wonder what exactly they had unleashed.
Religion, too, was in ferment. The Anglican and Puritan dominance of the 1760s gave way to Methodists and Baptists, their horseback ministers carrying revival across the frontier. At Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801, tens of thousands gathered for what was hailed as “the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit since the beginning of Christianity.” The scenes were wild - people rolling on the ground, laughing, moaning, crying. Critics joked that more souls were conceived than converted. Yet from these upheavals sprang new sects: Shakers, Universalists, evangelical movements that bloomed and vanished, and a decade later, the Mormons. Some were founded by women, many flared out quickly, but all testified to the volatility of belief.
By 1815, as the revolutionary generation passed from the scene, the founders looked on a nation they barely recognized. Instead of harmony, they saw disorder; instead of sober republican virtue, a society drinking, rioting, and praying itself into a bewildering array of directions.
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Far from settling into tranquility, the young republic revealed a pattern that would persist: there has never been a moment in American history when Americans turned to one another and said, *“At last, we have no troubles. Now we can live in peace and prosperity.”
Far from settling into tranquility, the young republic revealed a pattern that would persist: there has never been a moment in American history when Americans turned to one another and said, *“At last, we have no troubles. Now we can live in peace and prosperity.”
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