Revival, Wheels, and Waterways: America’s Spiritual & Economic Turn, 1800–1840.

In the early 1800s, America was torn between reason and revival. As deists like Thomas Paine declared “My own mind is my own church,” a democratic wave of evangelical fervor swept through Cane Ridge, Kentucky, and beyond. The Second Great Awakening fueled reform, women’s activism, and new Black churches while industry, steam, and canals transformed work and mobility. From Whitney’s cotton gin to Lowell’s mills and Fulton’s steamboat, faith and factory remade the republic in tandem. “Revival, Wheels, and Waterways” explores how a nation in motion—spiritually and economically—began defining what progress, freedom, and destiny would mean in the new American century.