Specifically, it was more appealing to Methodists and Baptists, who resembled the fire and brimstone religious revivals of the First Great Awakening one hundred years earlier. They closely tied one's personal moral responsibility to not only save souls by converting them, but to practice lifelong acts of Christian charity and humanity as a means of salvation.
The temperance movement against alcohol use and sale was formed during the Second Great Awakening, as was the reform movement to turn prisons into "rehabilitation" centers. The very word "penitentiary" comes from the root word "penitent" which means submission unto God. Dorothea Dix reformed those prisons and mental hospitals and people listened to a woman in those days because of the religious awakening that was taking place, because Christianity gave her moral authority.
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