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Significantly, the initiation and leadership of a major proportion of the reform movements, especially those in the first half of the nineteenth century, came from men and women of New England birth or parentage and from either Trinitarian or Unitarian Congregationalism.

Several of the movements were given a marked impetus by revivalism.

Quakers, some from New England, had a larger share than their proportionate numerical strength would have warranted.

We do well to remind ourselves that from men and women of New England ancestry also issued the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Science, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the American Home Missionary Society, the American Bible Society, and New England theology.

The atmosphere was one of optimism, of confidence in human progress, and of a determination to rid the world of its ills.

The Hopkinsian universal disinterested benevolence, although holding to original sin and the doctrine of election, inspired its adherents to heroic endeavours for others, looked for the early coming of the Millennium, and was paralleled by the confidence in man's ability cherished by the Unitarians, Emerson, and the Transcendentalists.