October 13, 2009 | Daniel Walker Howe is an emeritus professor in Oxford University and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848.” Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2008, the book describes a series of technological changes in early 19th century America that were as revolutionary as any in the past 50 years.

The first message ever telegraphed by Samuel Morse, “What has God wrought,” Howe contends, is also an appropriate signal for the many changes that technological innovation brought about in American life -- cultural, political and religious -- in the early 19th century.

Howe answered questions from Faith & Leadership about the continuities and discontinuities between that era and our own.

Q: How does our current information revolution compare with the one that occurred in the early 19th century?

It’s useful to compare the impact of the telegraph with that of the Internet in our own time. The telegraph probably lowered the cost of business transactions even more than did the Internet, and it certainly seemed to contemporaries an even more dramatic innovation. Commercial applications of Morse's invention followed quickly.

Most Americans then earned their living through agriculture. American farmers and planters increasingly produced food and fiber for far-off markets. Their merchants and bankers welcomed the chance to get news of distant prices and credit. The newly invented railroads used the telegraph to schedule trains so they wouldn't collide on the single tracks of the time. The electric telegraph solved commercial problems and at the same time had huge political consequences.

Along with improvements in printing, it facilitated an enormous growth of newspapers, which in turn facilitated the development of mass political parties. To sum up, then, the telegraph had much the same effects in the 19th century that the Internet is having today: to speed up and enable commerce, to decouple communication from travel, to foster globalization and to encourage democratic participation. The Czar of Russia worried about the democratic implications of the telegraph, just as the rulers of China today worry about the democratic implications of the Internet.

Q: Many religious groups spent the early 19th century founding colleges and universities, hospitals and various other institutions to achieve various social benefits, the fruits of which are still with us today. What was it about our forebears that made them willing to risk starting a new venture?

Early 19th-century American Protestants -- I’m slightly amused that you term them “our forebears,” considering how much immigration has occurred since then -- were incredible optimists. You point out, rightly, that many of the institutions they founded “are still with us today.” But many others are not. Innumerable little colleges, churches, chautauquas and reform organizations have failed along the way.

Yet from the Second Great Awakening through the Progressive Era, the energy and creativity of American Protestantism as a whole did not fail. Undoubtedly the environment of a new society, of being able to start afresh, the legitimacy of novelty, a sense of possibility -- all were important.

Religious institutions were not the only purveyors of novelty; secularists like the followers of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier founded utopian communities too, although their survival rate was not as good as those of religious groups.

For the religious, I think millennialism was important: the belief that they were preparing the way for the Second Coming of Christ. One of the most successful and enduring of the religious movements was the Mormons, whose Utah was the largest of all utopian communes, and whose zeal was fostered by the belief that they were living in the Latter Days.