The Second Great Awakening

During the first three decades of the 1800s, rural New York State transformed into an epicenter of intense Protestant revivalism, a movement later known as the Second Great Awakening. Religious men from abroad arrived in the United States to spread the word door to door and inspired many New Yorkers to leave their farms to listen to sermons. In 1827 in Wayne County, New York, Joseph Smith Jr. began translating what would become the Book of Mormon, a text that inspired the birth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The area also saw the emergence of Shakerism and a series of Utopian groups separated from mainstream society through communal living. It was a time of great excitement as Americans addressed their concerns for the young nation's moral character through faith and service, giving rise to reform movements supporting temperance, women's rights, and the abolition of slavery.