More specifically, how did the Second Great Awakening help to trigger reform, what did different types of reformers set out to do, and how well did they accomplish their goals.
The Jacksonian Era represented a time of change for many reasons. Lets start with the man, first, Andrew Jackson.
By the time Jackson reached manhood, everyone in his family were already dead. His father died when he was young, and his mother and two brothers perished during the war of independence. Furthermore, during the American Revolution, Jackson received a severe gash across his cheek from a British officer's sabre for refusing to clean his boots. Experiences such as this and the loss of his family force Andrew Jackson to venture out into the world on his own, and if he was to be successful, he was going to have to be a self made man.
Whatever inheritance Andrew Jackson did not squander, he lost in the bank panic of 1819 (an experience that led him to extremely dislike banks, especially the Second Bank of the United States). The main archetype during this era was the life of the common man. Jackson had to venture on his own, was a frontiersman, became a lawyer, then a militia leader. Eventually the latter led him to fighting in the Red Stick War and utterly crushing the Red Sticks at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Soon after, Jackson would be called defend (and successfully so) New Orleans during the War of 1812.
With no formal military training we see Jackson being very successful on the battlefield. This was something that gave every American pride, something that made people feel that Jackson was one of them, not some socialite or aristocrat from New York. He had suffered with the common folk of the era through the losses of his family, the battles with various Indian Tribes and the British, as well as his financial losses due to bank panics. Here, the American people had a president they could truly identify with, and Jackson himself was devoted to serving them.
One of his main goals was to pay off the public debt (better known in today's terms as the deficit). He did so by selling federal land. To Jackson, this was his greatest achievement (and the only president to actually payoff the deficit in his term. AJ also did not like how the Second Bank of the United States altered the political structure in Washington (many congressmen were on its payroll, including Daniel Webster, which was accepted at the time) as well as how they had a stranglehold on the nation's economy. He didnt like that many Americans would have to answer to the bank on all business dealings, so he led a successful crusade against it as well.
Here, the common man was able to see in their president someone who had experienced the many things that they in fact had during their lives. This gave Americans pride, and further played on the important notion (especially throughout the 1800's) that America did not need an aristocracy to survive or function. Like him or not Andrew Jackson did much to inspire the average American of the day and greatly helped in molding the pride and stigma that went with it, of the common man and eventually the middle class.
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